A purist brand relaunch and corporate website

In a guided workshop in a relaxed atmosphere, fundamental clarity about the strategic direction of the brand was created with the centerline/ team — and with it the basis for the authentic brand communication of the future. The resulting comprehensive brand book describes the values-based vision and mission in centerline/'s own voice and gives the brand radiance. The result is a manifesto of the enthusiasm and passion you fundamentally feel in every encounter with the people of centerline/ — honest, understandable, and clearly to the point.

Building on the workshop, we let the insights and enthusiasm flow into every consideration of the visual communication concept, bringing the emotional components together with the facts in a universally applicable design system on which every future design will be based.

When we listen, we listen until we are certain we have truly understood our clients and their business. When we design, we design until we are genuinely excited about the result ourselves. And when we present our work, we do it differently than you may be used to. That means: once we have gained the certainty in our workshops that we have understood our clients both professionally and emotionally, we present our clients the newly developed corporate design for the first time when it is truly finished. No piecemeal steps where the big picture cannot be felt, but complete corporate designs in the form of well-thought-out, thoroughly tested sets of guidelines with all application examples, some of which you can see on this page.

Of course, this approach carries the inherent risk that, as an agency, we may have to do the work more than once. But the real effect with which the brand will ultimately perform — and which we can only let our clients truly experience as a whole — is worth more to us than the security of the familiar piecemeal approach, in which every element, from logo to color scheme to typography, has to be individually approved on the basis of supposed certainty of results for the agency. Because we believe in what we do for our clients, and because the best possible result is always at the center of our actions, we guarantee this approach to every client we accompany through the complete brand process.

Even when the company was founded, its global reach was central to the thinking behind its name. The “centerline” – the axis around which our Earth rotates – found its way into the company's name, yet was not reflected in the design of the old company logo. Reducing things to their essence is a quality that's often hard to find these days. Because the answer was so close at hand, we picked up this design approach and integrated the centerline into the logo at its precise tilt of exactly 23.5°. The result is a purist design element that appears timeless and confident.

For centerline/, a true classic among typefaces is used: Helvetica Neue. This evolution of Helvetica is used by numerous renowned companies and brands around the world. It stands out for its tremendous clarity and is perfectly suited to stylish, timeless designs meant to carry a certain puristic openness.

The format-independent design system for centerline/ forms the basis for the entire set of rules and the purist brand design. Universally applicable according to mathematical-geometric rules, it ensures permanently consistent design across all touchpoints and also helps enable effective design work.

As with the entire corporate design, care was of course taken with the corporate website to apply the newly developed design system precisely and consistently. In keeping with the fundamental design line, the navigation concept is minimal and acts as a wayfinding system for users, who – depending on their pre-selection – receive great informational depth within the relevant sections. All without making the page or the navigation feel overloaded. Subtle animations showcase the design elements of centerline/ and underscore the modern, purist look.

The centerline/ website is a brilliant example when it comes to demonstrating the advantages of websites that were truly developed from concept to implementation consistently without prefabricated templates. The flexibility required to present centerline/'s extensive offering appropriately while still achieving a visually lean website cannot be guaranteed if you rely on supposedly quick solutions based on prefabricated templates.

Our approach to building good websites that stand out from the crowd is to conceive, design, and develop them custom-made, pixel by pixel, for each client. Of course, that means more effort and therefore a somewhat higher price, but the investment pays off at the latest when the requirements go beyond the standard and you hit the limits of what templates can do.

We guarantee our clients not only an immense love for every detail, but also the implementation of every conceivable extension – even many years after development.

The more precisely the design system and its rules are executed, the more efficiently future designs can be created with a consistent look and feel – while at the same time the design system naturally needs to be as universally applicable as possible to generate few or, ideally, no special cases. During the development of our corporate designs, we put our design systems through their paces again and again, continuously testing our rulebook with designs from the most diverse genres. This gives us the confidence that our clients will be able to work with the rulebook later on. This process also produces a comprehensive visual overview of how the new brand will look as a whole.