Images shape brands.

I recently attended a party hosted by Dafi Kühne, one of my former students who has since become a renowned designer. He prints all his work himself, so his studio is a letterpress museum. He has an old Heidelberg press, a hand typesetting device and a Linotype machine, as well as wonderful wooden typefaces of the finest quality. I admired these treasures, reminiscent of my youth spent in my grandfather's printing shop. Among other things, I noticed a row of ink cans, including one from Gebr. Schmidt Druckfarben (printing ink). Almost automatically, I saw an advertisement in my mind's eye: red on red, the silhouette of Mount Fuji and, discreetly at the bottom right-hand edge, the company name Gebr. Schmidt Druckfarben underlined by a few squares in CMYK colors. Then a second advertisement appeared: blue on blue, with a small horse in front of a few hills. The next day, I had to check, but these advertisements date back to 1969. It was only later that I learned they were designed by my friend Olaf Leu. It's true that I still have these images stored and remember this brand after all these years, even though I've never bought printing inks. In my 60 years of professional experience, I have never asked a printing company about the brand of ink they use. It's simply the two brilliant, evocative images that made such an impression on me.

Similarly powerful and iconic are the images of another friend: Oliviero Toscani, who sadly passed away in January. The black child's hand on the hand of a white adult, the nun and priest kissing, and the three children — black, white, and Asian — sticking out their tongues are just a few of the images that made Benetton world famous. Then there was the fantastic 'Think Different' campaign for Apple, created in 1997 by Jennifer Golub, Jessica Schulman Edelstein and Yvonne Smith from the TBWA/Chiat/Day agency. Portraits of figures such as Miles Davis, Maria Callas and Albert Einstein, among others, were displayed in skyscraper format in Manhattan. I also remember the 'Shout on iPhone' posters from 2015, which impressively demonstrated the quality of the iPhone camera with huge images. Equally powerful are the advertisements from Tiffany in the late 1990s. These used images without text or logos, featuring a small gift box in Tiffany's signature colors as a detail somewhere in the picture. These images are immediately recognizable as Tiffany's because the Tiffany Blue acts as a logo. Back in 1845, Charles Lewis Tiffany had the ingenious idea of protecting the color rather than the logo. While I am referring to static images in the examples presented, this also applies to moving images or animations. Breakfast at Tiffany's is ultimately the best proof of this.

What can we learn from these examples? It is said that visual perception accounts for 80% of what our brains take in. Humans have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Yet they perceive almost 80% of their surroundings through their eyes and only 11% through their ears. Humans think, dream and speak in images. Social media and smartphones have made images the primary medium. In his theory of knowledge, Immanuel Kant says: ‘Without perception (imagination), there is no knowledge.’ The word 'imagine' comes from the Italian 'immaginare' [3]. Both terms originate from the Latin words imāgo and imāginis, meaning 'image', 'likeness' or 'appearance', and imāginārī, meaning 'to imagine' or 'to form a picture'. We can apply this insight directly to our question: brands are only understood if target groups can form or recall an image that signifies that particular brand.

This idea is central to the concept. When a bank like UBS in Switzerland spends a lot of money on making its Zurich headquarters attractive, it does so to strengthen its brand image. Since people only interact with the bank online, it is important to make the idea of the bank's solidity visible. This allows customers to imagine that their money is being kept in a safe place rather than hidden in a ‘cloud’. In other words, the more virtual the dialogue with target groups, the more important the forms and symbols that shape a brand's image become – that's why images shape brands. This is a very simple insight, but these basic concepts are all too often overlooked in current discussions.

[1] https://www.babyinktwice.ch and Kühne, Dafi (2017) True Print. Lars Müller Publishers, Zurich (Switzerland)

[2] https://www.kontextlab.com Author Scholz, Bernard. Visuelle Wahrnehmung über Augenmenschen und Sinneshirarchien (Visual perception via visual people and sensory hierarchies).

[3] Kant, Immanuel (1781). Kritik der reinen Vernunft(Critique of Pure Reason). Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag, Ditzingen (Germany)

I

I
recently attended a party hosted by Dafi Kühne, one of my former students who
has since become a renowned designer. He prints all his work himself, so his
studio is a letterpress museum. He has an old Heidelberg press, a hand
typesetting device and a Linotype machine, as well as wonderful wooden
typefaces of the finest quality. I admired these treasures, reminiscent of my
youth spent in my grandfather's printing shop. Among other things, I noticed a
row of ink cans, including one from Gebr. Schmidt Druckfarben (printing ink).
Almost automatically, I saw an advertisement in my mind's eye: red on red, the
silhouette of Mount Fuji and, discreetly at the bottom right-hand edge, the
company name Gebr. Schmidt Druckfarben underlined by a few squares in CMYK colors.
Then a second advertisement appeared: blue on blue, with a small horse in front
of a few hills. The next day, I had to check, but these advertisements date
back to 1969. It was only later that I learned they were designed by my friend
Olaf Leu. It's true that I still have these images stored and remember this
brand after all these years, even though I've never bought printing inks. In my
60 years of professional experience, I have never asked a printing company
about the brand of ink they use. It's simply the two brilliant, evocative
images that made such an impression on me.

Similarly powerful and
iconic are the images of another friend: Oliviero Toscani, who sadly passed
away in January. The black child's hand on the hand of a white adult, the nun
and priest kissing, and the three children — black, white, and Asian — sticking
out their tongues are just a few of the images that made Benetton world famous.
Then there was the fantastic 'Think Different' campaign for Apple, created in
1997 by Jennifer Golub, Jessica Schulman Edelstein and Yvonne Smith from the
TBWA/Chiat/Day agency. Portraits of figures such as Miles Davis, Maria Callas
and Albert Einstein, among others, were displayed in skyscraper format in
Manhattan. I also remember the 'Shout on iPhone' posters from 2015, which
impressively demonstrated the quality of the iPhone camera with huge images.
Equally powerful are the advertisements from Tiffany in the late 1990s. These
used images without text or logos, featuring a small gift box in Tiffany's
signature colors as a detail somewhere in the picture. These images are immediately
recognizable as Tiffany's because the Tiffany Blue acts as a logo. Back in
1845, Charles Lewis Tiffany had the ingenious idea of protecting the color
rather than the logo. While I am referring to static images in the examples
presented, this also applies to moving images or animations. Breakfast at
Tiffany's is ultimately the best proof of this.

What can we learn from
these examples? It is said that visual perception accounts for 80% of what our
brains take in. Humans have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and
touch. Yet they perceive almost 80% of their surroundings through their eyes and
only 11% through their ears. Humans think, dream and speak in images. Social
media and smartphones have made images the primary medium. In his theory of
knowledge, Immanuel Kant says: ‘Without perception (imagination), there is no
knowledge.’ The word 'imagine' comes from the Italian 'immaginare' [3]. Both
terms originate from the Latin words imāgo and imāginis, meaning 'image',
'likeness' or 'appearance', and imāginārī, meaning 'to imagine' or 'to form a
picture'. We can apply this insight directly to our question: brands are only
understood if target groups can form or recall an image that signifies that
particular brand.

This idea is central to the
concept. When a bank like UBS in Switzerland spends a lot of money on making
its Zurich headquarters attractive, it does so to strengthen its brand image.
Since people only interact with the bank online, it is important to make the
idea of the bank's solidity visible. This allows customers to imagine that
their money is being kept in a safe place rather than hidden in a ‘cloud’. In
other words, the more virtual the dialogue with target groups, the more
important the forms and symbols that shape a brand's image become – that's why
images shape brands. This is a very simple insight, but these basic concepts
are all too often overlooked in current discussions.

[1] https://www.babyinktwice.ch and
Kühne, Dafi (2017) True Print. Lars Müller Publishers, Zurich
(Switzerland)

[2] https://www.kontextlab.com Author
Scholz, Bernard. Visuelle Wahrnehmung über Augenmenschen und
Sinneshirarchien (Visual perception via visual people
and sensory hierarchies).

[3] Kant,
Immanuel (1781). Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason). Philipp Reclam jun.
Verlag, Ditzingen (Germany)