Tania Messell

Cohesive corporate design programmes were developed in the context of post-war economic prosperity, during which the scope of major companies expanded in both size and activity. These identities encouraged the recognition, and thus success, of their products and services in increasingly complex markets, with design becoming a key tool in the achievement of corporate goals and aspirations.

I set out to examine why, by whom and how the first corporate identities were introduced and developed between 1950 and 1975 in France. I examine the ‘five-and-dime’ store (magasin populaire) Prisunic and its retail spaces; the electrical equipment producer Merlin Gerin and its printed materials; and the airline UTA and its aircraft. The research reveals the companies’ design commissions went hand in hand with their expansion during the social unrest and heavy de-skilling that resulted from their increasingly fragmented organisation. Cohesive corporate identity thus acted as a unifying tool for the companies’ image, revealing the strategies developed by French designers to create an image that satisfied the companies’ desire to appear modern, unified and ubiquitous.