Design as a trademark

To create fascination and brand identity: that's the objective of the Mercedes-Benz design philosophy, oriented towards long-term effect rather than short-lived trends, it taps into a “gene pool” of brand-typical style elements in the sense of a living tradition.

For Mercedes-Benz, design is literally a trademark. Because for over 100 years, design has characterised the image of the brand with the three-pointed star and has made visible typical Mercedes brand values such as fascination, responsibility and perfection. Insofar, design has important tasks on two counts – and Mercedes design has fulfilled them for many years now very successfully: the car's lines fascinate not only because of the product itself, they also serve as a mirror of the philosophy and profile of the Stuttgart-based automotive brand. In other words: design makes brand values visible – and sets its mark on them.

Enlarge   Design makes brand values visible. Design should also awaken passion, passion for the automobile and the wish to possess a model. “Love at first sight” has long been a slogan with a great reality content in the automotive trade. After arousing love at first sight, one of the main tasks of the designers is to create a lasting relationship and maintain the love affair over many years. The psychological arc goes from acquaint to recognise to brand awareness. It is not only a question of creating shapely, functional individual products, but of generating brand identity at the same time.

However, in order to build up and care adequately for such a successful brand image, long-term strategies and conceptual continuity are essential. New Mercedes models must indeed formally create a bridge to the future, but at the same time their lines may not abandon their origin. Given that a product life span of around 20 years is quite realistic for Mercedes automobiles, the designers must not indulge in passing fancies.

Enlarge   Mercedes-Benz Design. A Mercedes-Benz is always recognisable as a Mercedes-Benz. Meticulously and with great care, Mercedes-Benz designers ensure that certain style features, while being further developed, are retained in their basic form. Every model – whether it is a luxury saloon, a coupé, a roadster or a compact-class car – presents itself as an independent “personality”. The common, well-known basic patterns of the form language are combined with new style elements that at first appear surprising, yet in conjunction with familiar elements condition, ever anew, the perception of the Stuttgart-based automotive brand.

Trends and reality

Recognising and shaping trends are important tasks of the w They live in the present, but their realm of action is the future. This calls for a very sensitive perception for changes in customers' life habits, for people's new attitudes towards their daily life and for those tendencies concerning form and colour made evident in other sectors such as the furniture industry or the electronics sector, for example. Or for impulses coming from other cultures.

Enlarge   Auto designers of Mercedes-Benz. This is why Mercedes designers do not only work in Germany, but in Italy, Japan, China and the USA as well. The automaker has set up Advanced Design Studios at all these locations, to act as a sort of seismograph and pick up stylistic trends on site and analyse them to process them creatively.

A key issue here is the ability to intuitively grasp that which can attain formal timelessness, and to develop a sensitivity for important, sustainable tendencies in art, culture and society. 

Function and aesthetics, technology and art: what at first sight sounds contradictory has to blend into a harmonious overall concept in a modern car. The objective has been attained if design work and the engineering arts complement each other on a sophisticated level. Thus, practicality and good design are not natural enemies. Technological leadership is an integral part of the brand philosophy and it is the task of design to make this mission visible, while setting trends in its own way.

Enlarge   Technology and design work together. But whether a unique research vehicle or series-produced – a motor vehicle is always perceived with one's senses. No-one can evade its emotional effect. Long before one has any idea about the relevant technical facts or innovations, through its mere appearance – that is, through its design – it awakens desires. It is the responsibility of the designers to awaken and keep alive these emotions.   The goal of their work is to create automobiles in the field of tension between technology and design, that are characterised both by technical and emotional intelligence.