AEG Corporate Identity

AEGの企業アイデンティティ / 1907-1914 / Style / Modern Design Movements

Products, factory and printed matter all handed to one architect, so that a company looked as though a single hand had made it. The lettering, objects and buildings Behrens drew for AEG from 1907 became the prototype of corporate design.

AEG Corporate Identity — Behrens, AEG Turbine Factory 1909 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · © Felix Müller — Behrens, AEG Turbine Factory 1909 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Felix Müller

AEG Corporate Identity — Peter Behrens, AEG electric kettle 1909 (Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln) — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Peter Behrens, AEG electric kettle 1909 (Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln) — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

At a glance

Visual cues

Company lettering drawn from geometry
Products built as one family of forms
A gabled front of steel and glass with the ornament taken off
One hand visible from kettle to catalogue

Best used for

Aligning products, printed matter and buildings under one corporate standard
Putting the design criteria for mass production into words a company can share

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Dictionary entry

Type: One typeface fixed as a standard, sizes and margins given as numbers
Composition: Products and advertising built on one grid and one dimensional system
Material: Standard industrial materials, with quality carried by the finish
Caution: Reading standardization as sameness, making everything one shape and skipping the argument about quality, which lands in dull mass production.
Further study: Peter Behrens / Hermann Muthesius / the standardization debate (Muthesius vs. van de Velde)

Related entries

Bauhaus (バウハウス)Shared effects: Trust.Compare AEG Corporate Identity and Bauhaus
Arts and Crafts (アーツ・アンド・クラフツ)Editorially linked for a useful contrast.Compare AEG Corporate Identity and Arts and Crafts

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Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/aeg-identity
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