Company signet
A company signet is the visual sign of a company or a company in a graphically designed form. It can consist of a graphically designed company lettering, an icon or a combination of the two. A signet is the distinguishing mark of a company, whereas the brand is the distinguishing mark of a product.
use
The company logo visually distinguishes a company or a company and products marked with it from other similar types. It is used in company communication as a company logo or trademark . Legal trademark protection only arises when the trademark is registered with a patent and trademark office or in individual cases when the trademark is well known.
Depending on how it is used, a company signet is also known colloquially as a company logo, brand, trademark, logo , company logo or label .
History of origin
Predecessors of the company logo are medieval house brands and producer and author's marks ( signets ), e.g. B. Masters , guild or trade marks from around 13th century onwards that were family, professional or personal. At the beginning of the 18th century, new manufactory brands of mercantilism emerged as a sign of origin, which were no longer personal, but manufacture-related. At the end of the 18th century the first purely company-related factory brands of early capitalism developed , new or emerged from z. B. Manufactory or master marks. The beginning of industrialization from around 1840 led to a steady increase in factory and industrial brands and their use in print advertising, which was also emerging. The " German Trademark Law " passed in 1894 enabled the development of modern trademarks and the modern company logos of the 20th / 21st centuries. Century.
literature
- Claudius Kohrt: The importance of marking when choosing between manufacturer and private label from the consumer's point of view. Diplomica Verlag, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8366-5174-5 .
- Annemarie Meiner: The German Signet - A Contribution to Cultural History - History of the German Signet. In: Journal of the German Association for Books and Literature. Leipzig 1922.
- Umberto Eco: Characters - Introduction to a concept and its history. Edition Suhrkamp, 1977, ISBN 3-518-10895-6 .
- Umberto Eco: Introduction to Semiotics. Fink, Munich 1972, ISBN 3-7705-0633-2 .
Web links
- Brand lexicon, brand knowledge from A – Z
- Company signet, The design of a company signet ( Memento from June 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Duden entry - Signet Retrieved on May 31, 2012.
- ↑ Michael Plüschke: Difference: word mark vs. Word / figurative mark October 31, 2014.
- ↑ Dissertation, The Power of Brands - Past and Present . University of Regensburg October 2001. Accessed May 31, 2012.