Corporate identity

PurplePrice Mag · October 26, 2026 · 3 min read

Corporate identity is the way a company presents itself to the public. It is not just the logo: it includes typefaces, colours, stationery, advertising, products, shops, buildings, even staff uniforms. Everything must speak with one voice, which is why the rules are gathered in a manual setting out colours, typefaces, layouts and uses of the logo.

Peter Behrens and AEG

The first modern example is considered to be that of AEG, the great German electrical company, which in 1907 appointed the architect Peter Behrens as artistic consultant, the same year he co-founded the Deutscher Werkbund. Behrens designed everything: the logotype, the typefaces, the catalogues, the lamps, kettles and fans, and even the factories, such as the famous Berlin Turbine Hall (1909). For the first time a single designer shaped every aspect of an industrial company, creating what we now call brand identity. The company's story is told on the AEG Electrolux page.

The London Underground

Another model is the London Underground. From 1908 Frank Pick, its publicity officer and later chief executive, built a highly recognisable identity: the disc-and-bar symbol, the roundel, in the form redesigned by Edward Johnston and used from 1919; Johnston's sans-serif typeface, in use since 1916 and still today; posters commissioned from artists and Charles Holden's modern stations. Everything, from the ticket to the architecture, bore the same stamp.

Olivetti and the postwar years

In Italy the most famous case is Olivetti. Under Adriano Olivetti design became a corporate philosophy that embraced everything, "from the shape of a space bar to the color scheme for an advertising poster": the typewriters of Marcello Nizzoli, then Ettore Sottsass and Mario Bellini, Giovanni Pintori's graphics, shops and factories by great architects. In America Paul Rand designed the IBM logo in 1956, then those of Westinghouse, ABC, UPS and, for Steve Jobs, NeXT. In Germany Otl Aicher shaped the identities of Braun and Lufthansa and the graphic system of the Munich 1972 Olympics, with its famous pictograms. The common language of these years was that of the Swiss School: grid, sans-serif type, rigour.

From manual to brand

From the 1960s studios specialising in complete identities emerged, such as Total Design in Amsterdam and Pentagram in London, and the corporate identity manual became an indispensable tool for companies, cities and institutions. Today people more often speak of brand identity: identity must also work on screens, in apps, in sounds and animations. But the principle is the same one that guided Behrens: every point of contact with the public, from the product to the shop, must tell the same story. That is what makes a company like Apple recognisable at first glance.