Hesse in New Clothes: Why a State Redesign Makes Sense — and Why It Must Be Only the Beginning

After 22 years, Hesse is getting a new corporate design — and with it a debate as old as public design itself: should the state be spending money on this? The government’s rationale is straightforward: the 2004 look-and-feel was created in an era when digital media played a far smaller role, and today information needs to be presented clearly, contemporarily and consistently across channels. A refreshed look, it says, should also make that distinctive “Hesse feeling” more visible.

That sounds plausible. I’m happy to leave the verdict on the design’s craft and aesthetics to the specialists. Yet focusing on the visuals alone is too narrow — in two directions at once. Reduce the issue to a “logo” and you miss what standards and templates actually do in day-to-day administration. Reduce it to “design” and you miss the real question: where is the brand?

A new corporate design is not, in itself, a brand. At best, it is the brand’s visible expression.

A brand is not the wordmark or the symbol. A brand is what people associate with an institution: its stance, performance, reliability, and the experience it delivers. And that is where things become political. A federal state is not a product that can simply be “positioned”. It is an open system — a polity, a public realm, a space in which meaning is constantly negotiated.

In their article “A Brand for Frankfurt. Really?”, Dr Eric Häusler and Prof. Dr Jürgen Häusler put this with admirable clarity on THE BUSINESS OF BRAND MANAGEMENT: a city does not primarily follow an economic market logic; it has no single owner and no marketing board that can dictate identity and tone of voice. The same is true — at least as much — of a German state.

Precisely for that reason, public-sector brand leadership is a demanding discipline. It must not become a campaign that irons out diversity and contradiction. It has to be measured against legitimacy: what does this state stand for — and how can that be felt in everyday life?

On the design side, Hesse does offer reasonable arguments. The rollout is described as a phased process: first the State Chancellery and ministries, then senior agencies and public bodies, and later the wider administrative landscape. Printed materials will only be replaced when they are due for updating anyway — with restraint and without unnecessary spending. Most importantly, the government stresses something that often gets lost in the noise: standardised templates and clear rules are meant to prevent duplication, avoid expensive one-off solutions, and increase efficiency and recognisability. That is not aesthetics. That is administrative logic.

And still, a certain unease remains — not because design is inherently wrong, but because in the public sphere it is so often argued about by proxy. In tight fiscal times, prioritisation is a core political task. A state cannot fund everything at once, and it has to explain why it spends money on one thing now rather than another. That applies to roads and schools, to digital infrastructure and culture — and it also applies to communication standards. The balancing act is real: on the one hand, consistent, digital and comprehensible public communication is not a frivolity. On the other, any visible expenditure becomes an easy target when shortages are felt elsewhere. This is where it will be decided whether the redesign is understood as modernisation — or dismissed as symbolism.

In addition, there is another aspect that has been surprisingly absent from the debate so far: the centerpiece of the new design — the modernised 1919 Volksstaat coat of arms — is being presented as a democratic symbol. Yet while it did mark the beginning of parliamentary order in Hesse, it also continued unchanged throughout the years of Gleichschaltung and National Socialist rule. This historical ambivalence carries a weight that is barely acknowledged in the official narrative. If this symbol is to serve as the state’s visual anchor today, the government should explain why such a contradictory legacy is meant to be identity‑forming.

But the debate is not only about costs. At its core, it is a debate about growth — not growth in the sense of “more advertising”, but growth in the sense of greater capacity to act. A strong public brand can function as a decision- and leadership tool: it creates shared guardrails that ministries, agencies and subordinate bodies can use to align their choices. It does not eliminate trade-offs, but it makes them visible — and therefore negotiable. And it can make prioritisation easier by offering criteria: what contributes to what Hesse wants to stand for — and what does not?

In that sense, brand becomes a lever: for coherence, speed, clarity — and, at best, trust.

The crucial point runs deeper still. Even if the design system were flawless, no brand would be “built” by that alone. Brands are not made from lions; they are made from lived performance. When Hesse says the new appearance strengthens a shared identity, it is making a brand promise. What remains unclear is what, concretely, that identity is meant to consist of — and which political and societal dimensions of performance are meant to be tied to it.

If you are looking for a solid foundation, you will not find it in a style guide, but in the place where a state binds itself: its constitution. The Constitution of Hesse contains state objectives that are remarkably well suited to serve as a brand core precisely because they do not sound like image work, but like obligation: sustainability as a principle of state action; the promotion and preservation of technical, digital and social infrastructure and of adequate housing, paired with a mandate to work towards equivalent living conditions in urban and rural areas; the protection and promotion of culture, volunteering and sport. And strikingly modern: the right to informational self-determination and the guarantee of the confidentiality and integrity of information-technology systems. Add to this a commitment to Europe and to democratic, rule-of-law and social principles.

Taken seriously, this is already a brand strategy in rough form: not as a slogan, but as a normative compass. And this is where the opportunity lies — to turn a design project into a cross-party brand project. Not “Hesse, but prettier”, but “Hesse, with direction”.

What could that mean in practice? A state that enshrines sustainability as a guiding principle and infrastructure as a state objective could translate those aims into a binding narrative: Hesse as a reliable enabler — for mobility, digital administration, housing and equivalent living conditions. A state that guarantees the confidentiality and integrity of IT systems could derive a service promise from it: digital sovereignty as a civic right made real. And a state that protects and promotes culture, volunteering and sport could treat these not as “soft” topics, but as social glue and a location factor — and thus as part of an integrated state identity.

All of this has a formative, will-shaping dimension. And it is capable of cross-party support because it does not depend on the politics of the day, but on a shared normative framework. That is precisely why the constitution is so interesting here: it provides a kind of brand backbone that does not have to be reinvented after every election.

And this is also where the suspicion arises — one that should not be smoothed over: is the new design the expression of a strategic Brand Hesse, or primarily an aesthetic update that elegantly sidesteps the bigger questions? As things stand, it is not yet clear which will-shaping dimension is meant to be attached to it. Which idea of Hesse is to be strengthened politically? Which performance promises are being made visible and bundled? Which standards for citizen-centredness, clarity and digital sovereignty follow from this?

These are not “marketing” questions. They are questions about the relationship between state and citizens. Trust does not emerge because something looks good. Trust emerges when processes work, responsibilities are clear, information is understandable, digital systems are reliable — and rights, especially in the digital sphere, are not merely asserted but protected. Hesse itself provides the right ambition: consistent design is meant to strengthen orientation and trust. But trust is not a design output. It is an outcome of experience.

That is why this step should be judged positively — and at the same time placed in the right frame. A consistent corporate design is necessary infrastructure for modern public communication. It can reduce friction and increase efficiency. It can make a state recognisable in digital spaces. And in times of tight budgets, it may even signal that administrative communication is not treated as a side issue, but as part of state modernisation.

But the job is not done. This is the opening move.

If Hesse wants to use this momentum, the new appearance must evolve into visible brand leadership: a brand that does not stop at the symbol, but translates constitutional values and state objectives into performance promises — in infrastructure, housing, sustainability, culture, volunteering and digital fundamental rights. Only then would the design cease to be the topic and become the medium.

And only then might we one day say, looking back: the lion was not the punchline. It was the door-opener.

Sources

• Hesse (State Government) — Questions & Answers (Corporate Design)
• TBoBM — A Brand for Frankfurt. Really?
• Designtagebuch — Hesse receives a new corporate design
• Hesse (State Government) — Corporate Design (project page)
• Hesse (State Government) — Press release: The state appears in new clothes
• hessenschau.de — Hesse gives itself a new design
• Frankfurter Rundschau — Criticism of priorities/costs
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung — New corporate design — but at what price?
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung — This is what the new corporate design looks like