Laboratoires Sarbach was a French pharmaceutical company founded in 1946 by Raymond Sarbach, a pharmacist based in Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne in the Ain department. The company produced antibiotics and a range of pharmaceutical specialties before being acquired by the Belgian chemical group Solvay in 1976 and renamed Laboratoire Thérapeutique Moderne (LTM) in 1981.[1]
Design and History
The mark associated with Laboratoires Sarbach was created in 1966 as a product mark for a sedative. It was designed by Erich Brenzinger, a German graphic designer who studied at the Ulm School of Design (HfG Ulm) from 1957 to 1961 in the Visual Communication department.[2] The work was documented in the September 1971 issue of the Japanese design magazine IDEA (Vol. 19, No. 108), which featured a portfolio of Chourgnoz Publicité, the French advertising agency where Brenzinger worked.[3]
Chourgnoz Publicité was founded by Jean-Marie Chourgnoz (1929-2019), who established his advertising agency in Lyon in 1956 before moving to Paris. The agency served major French clients including Renault, Simca and Elf, and was responsible for the 1967 Elf corporate identity, on which Brenzinger collaborated alongside Chourgnoz, Henry Chaney and Jean-Roger Rioux.[4][5]
The Sarbach mark appears in the IDEA feature as item six in a sequence of logos, listed as “Laboratories Sarbach, mark of a sedative product, 1966, Designer: Erich Brenzinger.”[3] The listing confirms both the year of creation and the designer attribution, though no detailed visual description or design rationale was published alongside it.
Meaning and Symbolism
No documented explanation of the Sarbach mark’s symbolism has been found in the available sources. The mark was created specifically for a sedative product rather than as a corporate emblem for the entire laboratory, which suggests it functioned as a product-level identifier within the company’s broader pharmaceutical range.[3]
Brenzinger’s design work at Chourgnoz Publicité was part of a broader French graphic design movement in the 1960s that produced corporate identities for major national clients. Chourgnoz himself described such logos as “the coat of arms of our modern civilization,” a phrase he used in reference to the Elf logo he helped create.[4]
Logo Index is an independent educational archive covering logos, visual identities and graphic design history. All trademarks and brand assets remain the property of their respective owners.
