his guiding principle also shapes Seibert Group’s own corporate culture and thus its identity, which has recently been redefined. The first step in the rebranding was a new logo. “The name ‘Seibert’ and the two slashes have established themselves over two decades as a recognizable symbol for our brand,” explains Corporate Designer, Carolin Schariflou. So, it was clear that the slashes should continue to play a key role in the new look. Other objectives for the logo concept were to dispense with capital letters, create a modular design for possible Seibert sub-brands and ensure that it all chimed with the brand personality, which is defined as: open, communicative, courageous, passionate, agile and chaotic.
Exclusive logotype for Seibert
The Seibert marketing team turned to Fontwerk because McQueen was already being considered as the new corporate font – as part of the gradual redesign of the visual identity. Fontwerk developed the type design formulas for the new logo based on McQueen, drawing inspiration from the brand’s aspirations and values under the leitmotif “Level up your collaboration”:
fresh → young → agile = lowercase (seibert)
bold → unusual → communicative = ink traps
open → willing to change → chaotic = high-contrast
The line width for the new logo was not only the result of the English bold = courageous = bold, but also of the fact that ink traps and contrasts only really come into their own with large line widths. Fontwerk’s presentation of the final proposals put everyone in a good mood in Wiesbaden:
We are really thrilled with the result and felt very well-advised and looked after.
“We are really thrilled with the result and felt very well-advised and looked after,” reports Marketing Designer Diana Schweitzer from the company headquarters. This was mainly due to the trust and great freedom that Seibert gave the Fontwerk team, without which the direct path to a new, bold typographic appearance would have not been possible.
As part of the logo development, two logo fonts were built in just six weeks, which ensure comfortable and safe use of the two logo variants (short form, logotype) for all employees: the logo is simply typed in. The key sequence s// creates the bold short form via the OpenType automatic, seibert// the high-contrast long form.
To ensure legibility of the company name in small print (less contrast, larger tracking), Fontwerk developed a second logo font. In addition to the bold logo letters, both fonts contain all 26 letters of the English alphabet in normal line width, so that sub-brands can also be built and launched directly in the future.