What's next? A preliminary resume of the past decade of digitalized communications

Design Management Journal, Fall 2003 by Hesse, Christine, Hesse, Klaus

But this does not excuse us from constantly scrutinizing and updating our own values. The greatest challenge for all brand identities lies in their ability to continually reinvent themselves. The only brands, companies, and institutions that will be able to assert themselves in the long haul will be those that are ready to change, without giving up on themselves. This entails a dynamic tightrope walk between reinvention on the one hand and verification of values on the other. And there is even more, this can only be done on a global level if the essential traits specific to each region are also taken into consideration.

In Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland, this development has already left behind its first visual traces. In its search for a new sort of credibility, typography and photography have returned to the qualities of the modern classics. Brands are always on the lookout for a genuine basis in life values, and designers have recognized that they cannot survive innovative competition in the long haul unless they make more frequent use of "timeless" layouts. Although the majority of journalistic and advertising communications in Europe, and in the rest of the world, for that matter, still remain stereotypical and arbitrary, some photography, particularly in central Europe is making "true" values clearly visible and worth imitating. The "beauty of the unbeautified" is the new motto of European photography and has already given several brands a leg up on the competition. After many decades of "dolling things up," designers and brand decision makers are on the lookout for honest forms of expressing themselves-a trend that one hopes will continue.

Reprint # 03144HES38

1. 1997, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany.

Christine Hesse, Hesse Design

Klaus Hesse, Chair, Conceptual Design, Academy of Art and Design, Offenbach, Germany