The Designpreis Brandenburg is awarded every two years to outstanding creative projects from designers, agencies, and companies within and around the Brandenburg area. In winter 2016, I participated in a competition at University of FH-Potsdam to redesign the new visual identity for the event and award. The goals were to rethink visual identity of the award and redesign the award itself, extract prize figure out of logotype, develop a silhouette to unify the branding; and “unify Brandenburg”, refine prize figure to simple minimalistic form/shape & to make it contemporary.

I began by examining the coats of arms from the various Brandenburg state flags. I then reduced the shape to its simplest form common to all of the coats of arms – the blazon – and extracted its silhouette. By translating the shape of the shield into a winner’s trophy, the new logo communicates a simple and clear gesture with a high claim of ‘value’ and ‘officiality.’ I also developed a brand manual to describe how to adapt the logo to different formats and materials. The final object is a heavy golden brass shield rigged with a 3D-printed stack screw so that it appears to be floating when mounted on a wall.
Brandenburg is made up of a total of eighteen districts. Each district has an individual coat of arms.
Manufacturing the shield was done by S-Hamacher, who had previously produced objects with artists like Olafur Eliasson.

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