I saw many great things in my recent Thailand holiday: golden temples, white temples, emerald buddhas, spas in the jungle, tropical paradise beaches, living shrimp salad, stink fruit juice and many other funny things. As always when I travel, I was looking for outstanding designs and inspirations in Thailand. And once more it showed how important a consistent corporate design is. A corporate design guarantees a high value of brand recognition. Just take a look below: Despite the Thai font, I'm sure you know all these products (find the solution at the bottom of this blog post): Red Bull has a special status as it originally comes from Thailand (it was made big worldwide by the Austrian entrepreneur Mr. Mateschitz). The Thai Red Bull also tastes very different! As it's very hip in Thailand to be like a European (skin whitening creme, eye operation etc.), the canned Red Bull - as we know it - is sold as "European Import" in Thailand: Red Bull in the can: "Product of Europe" This is how the Thai Red Bull looks like. In our western culture, it reminds of medicine. As you saw in this blog post, a logo alone is not everything. Only a consistent corporate design concept guarantees a value of brand recognition and thus generates the client's trust in the product. If you need a corporate design, send me an email and I'm happy to help you. Solution product names (order like photos): Colgate Total, Fanta, Sprite, Coca Cola Zero, Danone Actimel. #branding #corporatedesign #packaging #thailand #logo

As an app magazine designer, I’m always looking for new inspirations and challenges as regards the tablet magazine market. High-quality design and usability are things I focus on most. So I took a closer look at this year’s winner of the Digital Magazine Awards. Learning from the best is always good, right? The Wired Magazine’s UK issue won the title "Digital Magazine of the Year 2014". But before going into detail about the Wired Magazine, I want to talk about another publication that had also made it into the DMA’s final round: the TOUCH Magazine. This magazine comes out in two languages (English and Spanish) and had a special issue titled "1900’s special edition". What was considered sexy around 1900 (okay, it is a man’s magazine) and what else happened around that time? This is presented in a beautiful and playful way with many animations and interactive features that really look cool. Beautiful to look at. But: Too much of a good thing is not good. As a designer, I’m of course very critical and I have to point out that the animations put the content aside and the reader might be overwhelmed by all the buttons to tap. I have asked some friends to test the magazine and give me feedback. Their opinions: "You have to be extraordinarily fit using apps for reading this magazine." "It is very beautiful, but exhausting." "I did not want to continue reading after two pages." Especially the continuously (!) flashing navigation buttons destroy the beauty of the app, what I find really sad. To make matters worse, the reading flow is not logical and quite disturbing. I have to swipe to the right, then upwards, then downwards, simply confusing. The TOUCH Magazine shows that too much clutter on the screen can really put readers off. This cannot be something the publisher aims for. The British Wired Magazine offers a much better experience. This app has a fantastic impressive layout, a logical reading flow, perfectly used animations, useful interactive features and top stories. Also the typography is executed very wisely, the font scheme is perfectly adapted for a pleasant reading experience on a tablet. Moreover, there are highly interactive app advertisements that the user can really engage with nicely. As a designer, I try my hardest to find any flaws – and remain unsuccessful. This is how a tablet magazine should be! The Wired Magazine (UK) is a positive example for the content being in the focus and interactive features and animations sublty supporting the content as well as the reading flow. Once again, the British have proved that they are at the top of their game when it comes to media: Using brainpower, top-notch design and a full understanding of how app magazines work. So, let’s hope this understanding also gets over to the rest of Europe and our publishing houses stop lamenting and start earning money with really (!) good app magazines. By the way: The Wired Magazine is also published as an app for the German speaking market. Unfortunately, this app is just a copy of the print magazine with the exact same layout so that reading it on a tablet becomes very challenging. Slightly pixelated copy, always having to zoom in and out and a complete lack of tablet usability make the German Wired Magazine a typical App Store shelf wamer, in my opinion. I’m happy to buy the print issue, but the app? No, thanks. If you want to publish on a tablet too, simply send me an email . I’m looking forward to helping you. #app #digitalpublishing #magazine #dma #tablet

When I was in South America this summer, I also visited the possibly most beautiful city of the continent: Quito, the capital of Ecuador. I already knew that the Ecuadorians love good food. What was new to me, however, was the fact that they have their own shop for Ecuadorian chocolate. Republica del Cacao processes local cocoa and wants to create a feel of adventure, discovery, authenticity and real, genuine chocolate enjoyment. The corporate design on the website as well as the POS store design transport this feeling perfectly. That is not only chocolate at its best, but also branding that is taken into practise perfectly. Also want a unique branding that really sells your products? Get in touch with me! #branding #chocolate #ecuador #quito #pos #shop

Even after the multimedia and computer discounter Saturn had got rid of its slogan "Geiz ist geil" (translates "Tight is right."), the "tight is right" mentality still lives in some parts of our society like an undefeatable bacteria. So it is not suprising that there is a new discounter in the design field: Tailor Brands. Just one thing beforehand: Tailor Brands does not do corporate designs but only logos. A visual identity or a successful branding is not even offered by Tailor Brands. Minimal effort for maximum success? Aha. Alright. I wanted to test it and find out how good or bad Tailor Brands really is. Based on my own business HCG corporate designs, I chucked on the automatic logo creation machine on the internet, because I wanted to see how the HCG corporate designs logo would look like according to the Tailor Brands algorithm. What is positive, is the fact that Tailor Brands seems to understand that a logo is not just a nice looking symbol but requires more background information. But Tailor Brands stops exactly there. The name, the business and a few keywords are apparently enough to generate a logo. Many "industry standards" are scanned through to create my logo. Industry standards? What? A logo has to transport the USP, the unique selling proposition and what makes the business stand out from the competitors. The opposite of that is industry standards. Tailor Brands obviously thinks that I as a designer should have a logo that looks similar to another designer’s logo. By then, my mind filled with design expertise got very frightened. I augured ill. And that’s exactly how it turned out to be: The logo result didn’t surprise me as a designer. However, the level of unprofessionality was shocking. Tailor Brands chucked a logo on my screen that had zero message, didn’t transport my business’ philosophy, was full of typographic mistakes, had a horrible kerning, an unprofessional size ratio between logo type and symbol and to make matters worse, the logo looked like as if I had a bakery but not a design agency. Correct logo Logo crated by Tailor Brands Conclusion: Years of design expertise, complex situations and understanding the company’s philosophy, target groups and future plans simply cannot be replaced by an automatic algorithm on the internet. This was once again proven – this time by Tailor Brands. Thanks for that confirmation, Tailor Brands. You also want a professional corporate design? Simply send me an email ! #branding #logo