The Swiss national broadcaster, SRG SSR, is gearing up for the launch of six high-definition channels on February 29. At the same time, its TV channels will introduce new logos, two of them will change their names, and there will probably be some new graphics. This is a culmination of a rebranding process that was revealed back in May 2010, aimed at bringing the corporation's activities closer together. Expect a post about that when more information becomes available.
In the meantime, the German division SRF has unveiled a new intro for its news programme, SF Tagesschau, which also launches on February 29.
Swiss International Air Lines, the flag carrier formed in 2002 after bankruptcy of Swissair, announced yesterday that it would be "sharpening its brand profile". This involves new corporate logos and a tagline that will be introduced from October.
Current logo.
Swiss' current brand identity was developed by Tyler Brûlé's Winkreative when the airline launched in 2002, and it appears the livery developed then will remain in use. The update is merely aligning the corporate logo with the livery, replacing the red squares used until now with the Swiss tailfin. The intent is to make Swiss instantly recognisable as "the airline of Switzerland", and a tailfin with the Swiss cross is arguably the first thing that comes to mind when one tries to visualise that.
3sat is a public television channel for the German-speaking countries. This advertising-free channel was founded in 1984 as a collaboration between the public broadcasters ZDF in Germany, ORF in Austria and SRG in Switzerland. Its schedule complements the domestic public channels in the German countries with programmes on culture and science.
Earlier this year, on April 16, 3sat launched a new on-air-look, created by the German motion design agency Velvet Mediendesign. The new look is inspired by the channel's slogan, Anders Fernsehen, which is play on words, and can mean both "Different television" and "Watch television differently".
The concept behind the new ID spots is called "The Magic of 3", and divides the screen into three parts that slide vertically to alter the image and the story. A compilation of the new idents can be seen below:
Even though 3sat doesn't broadcast in HD yet, the idents are produced in widescreen HD fomat in anticipation of a future launch. The music was produced by Largoland Musicproduction in Berlin.
Trailers and other on-screen presentation presentation uses the vertical slide effect seen in the IDs. 3sat's signature typeface is Gill Sans Bold Condensed, which is used in all on-air graphics and in most programmes originally produced for the channel. 3sat has a long relation with this this typeface, having used it for at least twenty years.
The previous on-air design was introduced on July 1, 2003, along with channel's current logo. It launched red as 3sat's signature colour, which dominates most on-screen graphics. It also included a large number of ID spots where people are filmed with "dolly zoom" effect, also known as the "Vertigo effect". The 2003 IDs were created by a production company from Frankfurt called Filmstyler, while the logo was developed in-house at ZDF. After its introduction, this graphics package has only gone through minor changes, the most significant being the switch to widescreen when the IDs were cropped.
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland. Last Thursday, on July 14, a new common brand identity was unveiled which will by used the canton of Zurich, the city of Zurich and the Zurich tourism authority. Included in the identity is a new slogan, "World Class. Swiss Made." and a new logo, which was designed by the Swiss agency Valencia Kommunikation.
The new logo marks a "commitment" by the three parties to develop integrated location and destination marketing for Zurich. The tagline should express "The commitment to the highest standards, Swiss quality and reliability".
The logo comes in two variants, one with a Swiss cross for "general purposes", and one with the "Goldblume", the Swiss tourism emblem. The blue colour is said to be associated with Zurich.
The previous tourism logo included the tagline "Downtown Switzerland" which had allegedly been used for over ten years.
Zürism Tourismus is already using the new logo on their website. A more serious marketing effort is planned for September, and will include ads on CNN International.
The Swiss news agency SDA/ATS was founded in the late 19th century. The full names behind the abbreviations are Schweizerische Depeschenagentur in German, Agence Télégraphique Suisse in French and Agenzia telegrafica svizzera in Italian. Yesterday, June 22, SDA/ATS unveiled a new corporate identity. It had been created with Zurich design agency Lumina.
Previous logo.
The agency claims its previous logo was introduced in the 1970s, and that certainly sounds believable. Its distinct "retro look" was considered "old-fashioned and boring".
While the old logo combined the German and the French/Italian abbreviations into one wordmark, there will now be separate logos for the three national languages. The logos combine a lowercase wordmark (sda or ats), a red bar and a tagline which means "The News Source". The red bar is used as a link between the wordmark and the tagline, and reinforces the agency's "Swissness" by using the same red colour as the Swiss flag.
There are also new logos for different SDA/ATS divisions (news, sports, IT and sales).
On April 13, the shareholders of the Swiss manufacturing group Rieter Holding decided that the company's two divisions would be split into separate companies. While its "Textile Systems" division, which create textile machinery, would remain with the first company and retain the Rieter name, what had until then been known as "Rieter Automotive Systems" would be spun of into a new company called Autoneum and distirbuted to the shareholders.
Autoneum's first day of trading was May 13, when they also launched the visual part of the corporate identity. It was created by MetaDesign Zurich.
The Rieter logo.
From MetaDesign's press release:
The brand clearly shows its heritage in the Rieter Group and thereby the values it continues to stand for. But it also communicates the independence it will need on the market to stand up against powerful competitors. The result is a convincing, high-profile look and feel that will be implemented across all brand touchpoints.
(...)
Bruno Schmidt, member of the executive board at MetaDesign Zürich, added, “In Autoneum a new industrial brand has been built in a very short time, one that will prove strongly competitive in Switzerland and markets around the world. We are convinced that the new brand’s look and feel will play an important role in the strength and competitiveness of this young company.”
On February 8, a new mark for Bern, the capital of Switzerland, was introduced to replace several logos related to promotion of the region. The new mark consists of the word Bern in capital letters with a Swiss flag at the end.
The Bern mark will be used by both the tourism bureau, Bern Tourismus, and the Berne Region Economic Development Agency. The two agencies had previously used different logos. For the economic development agency, the word "Wirtschaftsraum" is added underneath the mark.
Bern Tourismus recently took over the responsibilities of Schweizer Mittelland Tourismus (SMIT), who promoted tourism for four areas in the vicinity of Bern: Emmental, Gantrisch, Oberaargau and Laupen. Those four areas and the city have logo variations with the name of the region written underneath the Bern mark.
