From splendid uniforms to camouflage that can be confused.

I was happy to comply with the request of the editor of this medium to write an article about my individual understanding of brands and trademarks. However, I also "warned" against the highly subjective content of the next ninety-year-old. Also according to the motto: the young dance nonchalantly across the shiny floor, but we old dancers know the often overlooked and dusty corners - and can therefore use our little hidden broom here.

Brand? Brands? Identification through colors and symbols of a state, a community, a part of a country, a company, a product, a service.

It begins at the latest with the services of the knights and their armies. Since the following example is so rich in imagery, I would like to use this lived and extraordinarily passionate depiction of identification:

There is an army of the Knighthood of the Red Ox. Red tufts of feathers adorn the helmet, the shield shows an ox charging forward on a red background. The opponents wear a black tuft on their helmet, the shield shows a fire-breathing dragon on a black background. Now the opponents in the turmoil of battle are clearly identifiable, the comrade and the opponent.

Identification through colors and symbols create clear relationships.

Weapons technology in the 19th century shattered the previous colorful diversity. The French in their red pants and the blue Prussians in battle in 1871/72 were able to use their rifles to close the distance to the enemy at firing range. This created a separation in the armies that has lasted to this day and ultimately led to spot camouflage. Whether in the desert or the green grassy countryside, they wore the same uniform as their opponents. Only small national flags sewn onto the upper arm betrayed national affiliation.

Identification became a risk factor because it was recognized too late.

This brings me to the identification of companies, products and services. At the beginning of the 19th century, industry and business endeavored to create clear identities, especially at exhibitions. This was referred to as "trademarks". In many cases, these were usually intertwined capital letters, the initials of the manufacturer. They were legally protected as trademarks and were used on products in cast or applied paint to create an identity. They were more like signets, in the same way that laundry used to be marked; through their simple representation they "marked" an object and were thus an integral part of it. Any artistic elevated form was - if - like the Peter Behrens bridge for Farbwerke Hoechst or the AEG logo a deliberate beginning, a cocoon for more than just a signature, birth to a brand. The "fabricators" of the time, proud of their products, were not yet thinking purposefully about a marketing strategy. And when any insights in this direction matured, the previous "trademark", the signature, was also reworked in its form as a suitability for an overarching brand. Aesthetics played a role and many of the commercial artists of the time were involved. The USA often played a role as a model, especially in the 1920s and 1930s.

In the decades after 1900, the entrepreneurial art of making a name for oneself - presenting oneself under and with a brand - increasingly found its threefold equivalent in product and communication design, in the underlying product philosophy and in the inclusion of employee and user needs in the holistically oriented corporate policy. One example of this was Peter Behrens' holistic concept for AEG.

A generation later, in the 1930s, it was Hans Domizlaff who formulated and practiced this thinking as the founder of brand technology and creator of such brands as Cigarette R 6, Ernte 23, Appolinaris and the Siemens brands.

So far, we have distinguished this brand technique, applied to a company as corporate identity with its corporate communications instrument, from brand identity, which is a prerequisite for creating a brand product image through brand advertising and in the minds of consumers. Brand identity is the strategic extension of corporate identity with the means of marketing, also to build preferences among target groups. Domizlaff's brand-technical work for Siemens was corporate identity, the brand design for cigarettes was brand identity.

What has remained of all these grown results today?

There are probably the many new terms - all in English - that are being created by new software applications. And they will succeed, because the digital world is apparently the world of the miracle. Anyone standing in front of a ticket counter today and looking around for help because of the ambiguity of the operation is guaranteed to be over 60. Years ago, you could still hold a printed annual report "in your hand" and read it when you had the time. Today, this is almost only possible via the illuminated screen. And it requires the absolute frequency of sitting in front of this miracle machine. So print is in retreat. All the commercial printing, which used to be small print items such as invitations, is now only transmitted via the internet. Today's work is completely out of step, the tinkering with the 26 letters. These letters combined into information and such an "abstract form of language" do not need a single new font. Aesthetic brands with a high-quality sense of form are rare and can only be found with a magnifying glass. There are many bad shapes, such as the MERCK logo or the sign on the smart car. Much is mainstream, if there is a sender, then a "brand", usually a verbal hornification of various terms, one or two lines, rarely clear forms, but dusted with a lot of perfume. then an "abstract Hugo", which says nothing, contains nothing, a nothing. A brand is not given in this way.

Digital, and the sensible and unreasonable things that are done with it, is still "in its apprenticeship period", along with its users. It is not enough to sell new wine in old wineskins - the past era of outstanding greats in brand and communication was represented by many recognizable icons. It was also a time - I deliberately call it an era - that brought together many outstanding and excellent people at one time in one abstract place.

I end with Schiller: "Who dares, knight or knave, to dive down into this digital maw ..."