facultas
corporate design
client:
facultas verlags- und buchhandels ag
project lead:
christoph pauschitz
design team:
klemens fischer,
christoph pauschitz
GP developed the complete corporate-design-program for the major group of knowledge-publishers and scientific & academic book-shops in austria. our services with facultas provided corporate-identity-consulting, corporate claiming, p.o.p.-design-concepts, print and advertising. all concepts and implementations were summed up in online-manuals.
the logo
as key element — not too unexpectedly — the company logo features the traditional icon of publishing companies: the book. of course, science is a main issue when it comes to knowledge. given the rapid progress of science — facultas is expected and ready to deliver up-to-date knowledge and knowledge-services, therefore the visualisation of a casual stack of books doubles for the dna-structure — for its decoding was a recent, great triumph of science. in addition it stands for the infinity of progress and knowledge development in general.
the colour
having emerged from a small bookshop and publisher for medical science — facultas featured traditionally the blueish-green of hygiene and medicine as corporate colour. although the colour is more than controversial when it comes to taste it proved unique in the field of publishing-companies-cds. the colour was slightly switched to a more vivid greenish cyan-blue. all main-typography- and logo applications are used white on this backgroundcolour. all advertisements are — lets say dipped — in this colour. the use of the colour grants facultas its unmistakeable face.
the claim
facultas cultivates knowledge for the sake of the user. the expression of both sides of this aim is incorporated linguistically in the equivocal claim: »gut zu Wissen«. the phrase means to generate and to be at service, to care for the treasure knowledge (Wissen) and to provide the benefit that it is good to know to have facultas at one's service.
the pieces
»GP uses a clear visual language, which communicates very well. they can empathise with the client and still keep their way of designing. GP make no compromises in their creative work, they take the role of the lawyer for the ci of the corporation, but always focused on (and that is correct) the message, which is to communicate through the visual corporate identity. you can dicuss intensively with GP — and in the end they always find a nice, joint solution.«
mag. thomas stauffer
managing director
additional
during the development process facultas merges with the dombuchhandlung, a bookshop near the viennese minster, the stephansdom. we transformed the logo and incorporated the (in vienna well-known) pattern of the roof of the minster.
cd-manual
to achieve optimal implementation throughout the whole corporation every decision concerning the visual identity was documented in an corporate design manual. this manual is an online documentation for easy distribution.
what we did
as two of the leading publishers and providers of knowledge for universities in austria merged, the so-formed corporate structure required the appropriate corporate identity.
facultas — the name of the new company — was derived from one of the well established publishing houses, now part of the group.
in addition to its design-services GP designpartners helped to work out the overall structural concept and provided support during all phases of the project — from the first ci-meetings up to communication- and brand-strategy. first result of the identity-meetings was a compact brief for the development of the basic corporate design elements: name, logo, claim, typography, colours. concepts for communication, design of outlets, advertising and an online-manual — featuring all main issues of the brand identity — followed straight up.
given the very widespread structure of the company and their parts (publishing, bookshops and printservices) we decided for a straight set of visual elements and rules — easy to understand, to handle and to apply.
how we did it
1st we interviewed the managers to get an idea of what they want to achieve with the merger. we started with a series of workshops with the top management and discussed different options of the structure of the corporate group and what each of them means to the visual corporate identity.
2nd we developed a management questionnaire to further pin down the goals in general, in marketing, etc focusing on the visual point of view.
3rd the result was a set of keywords and key images which drove the development of the logo and the other basic elements, like colour, typography and the claim.
