Brands are complex and dynamic. They move with the times, respond to fashions and evolve. All of this is reflected not least in their appearance. Deutsche Telekom has further developed its brand elements in a number of different areas to ensure the brand’s recognisability across all contact points in an increasingly digitised world and to pave the way for a coherent brand experience.
“Our brand experience framework represents the first time that we have set out to create a shared understanding of what defines the way in which people experience our brand. It offers simple guidelines for designers by summing up our corporate attitude in a nutshell,” says Alexander Engelhardt, vice president of brand management and responsible for brand development. He added that digital environments increasingly demand “contextual flexibility rather than hard and fast rules”; for this reason, the brand needs to be able to “adjust to different people and situations – not the other way around”. Telekom started by redefining its audio identity last year, then developing functional sounds and the brand’s trademark voice, “Flavia”, on the basis of its reworked sound logo. Now it is taking the next step to further develop its brand identity by introducing a new brand design system. The company commenced its gradual international roll-out of the revised visual identity in June.
Its so-called Liquid Brand Design was developed in conjunction with the brand consultancy MetaDesign in Düsseldorf. The most obvious changes include the font TeleNeo and greater freedom in the use of shapes – variable design elements which can be chosen to support the message and also serve as a backdrop for communication and branding. The specially developed font, TeleNeo, replaces the previous corporate font. As well as having optimised typographical details, the new font is above all “more characterful and more modern”. The introduction of the new font also marks an update to the variable font format, which is advantageous when designing VR and AR applications, for example.
