Behr Möbel refers to the furniture manufacturer founded in 1912 as Möbelfabrik Erwin Behr in Wendlingen am Neckar, Germany. The company later operated under names including Behr International and Behr-Produktion KG. The visual identity associated with Behr Möbel in the 1960s is credited to the German graphic designer Anton Stankowski, whose Stuttgart-based studio produced a mark for the company in 1963.
Design and History
Anton Stankowski (1906–1998) established his graphic design office in Stuttgart in 1951, building a reputation as a pioneer of graphic design in Germany. His studio, later known as Stankowski + Duschek, became one of the country’s leading communication design firms, creating well-known trademarks and visual identity systems for clients including Deutsche Bank, Viessmann and Messe Frankfurt. [1]
According to the Logo Nature archive, which catalogues the mark, Stankowski designed a logo for Behr in 1963 through his Grafische Atelier studio. The archive describes the mark as a logotype using the letter “B” combined with holding shapes and squares. [2]
Before this 1963 mark, Behr used a different company sign. A product photograph from around 1958 for the “Wohnzimmer Modell 1295” shows the Behr company emblem in the form of an upright walking bear inside an oval, placed on the front of the photograph. [3] This earlier bear emblem indicates that the 1963 Stankowski mark represented a visual departure from the company’s previous identity.
By 1978, the company was issuing materials under the name Behr International, based in Wendlingen. A 20-page multilingual sortiment brochure from that year, titled “behr Wohnraum-Programme,” presented the company’s wall-unit and room-furniture systems. [4]
Meaning and Symbolism
Stankowski’s design philosophy emphasized the use of pure geometric forms, including the square, circle, line, plane and colour, an approach he adopted from Russian Constructivism. [5] The Behr mark, built around the letter “B” with geometric holding shapes and squares, reflects this constructive graphic approach. Stankowski and his partner Karl Duschek preferred the terms “Marke” (mark) or “Signet” over the modern word “logo,” distinguishing between pictorial and typographic marks. [6]
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