Justus Oehler Interviewed in ‘Der Standard’

“Too many good salesmen are selling too much bad design,” says Justus Oehler, Pentagram Partner in Berlin and London, in an interview with the Austrian national daily newspaper Der Standard (print edition only). He talks about his background, his career and the state of graphic/corporate design in general.

Standard: Do many of your clients sometimes lack the relevant experience?

Oehler: Even those companies who frequently change their corporate design do this every eight, nine years at the most. Most corporate designs are much older than that. This means that our clients often have very little experience in rebranding and corporate design exercises. They would have maintained existing corporate designs like you would maintain a house: fix the roof, a paint job every now and then… But building a house from scratch is a completely different ball game. To design a new logo and visual identity for a client is a big challenge which brings change and a lot of risk. This can be overwhelming for those managing the brand on client side: they become insecure because of their lack of experience.

Read the full interview here (German only).