Corporate Identity

"Good design is good business" - a belief that became rapid within the graphic design community in the 1950's. The advancement of technology pushed corporate leaders need to form an identity through use of image and identity to target audiences.
Even during the medieval period, the need to form an identity through visual marks was essential and compulsory in order to for the guilds to control the trade.
The first phase of development of visual identity was helped by an Italian typewriting business. Adriano Olivetti was important with his contribution of graphic product and architecture design for the company. He would always place a personal stamp on his images and as he did that , identity was create through the use of visual appearance of his promotional designs. It wasn't due to the systematic design program for the invitation of the reoccuring visual identity.

Design at the CBS
CBS corporate identity relied on the specifics of graphic elements and it's program, such specific typography and ways that communicated it's corporate identity. Golden designed on of CBS well known trademarks. The pictographic CBS eye became it's on air logo in 1951.
Consistency with visual communications was essential. The effectiveness of it created a symbol in which the community could recognise successfully and visualize the programs identity.

CBS approach for visual communication depended on the management of its policy toward design and the abilities their personals and not on system and style.

Norman Ives, well known for his corporate designs and helped designers recognise that a "symbol is an image of a company." The visual identity musn't loose it's form and identity but remain legible and memorable. The logo is to be able to be placed in all situations, size and not loose its identity. There must be a sense of unity within the composition as the psychological effect of the image is key in a corporates identity.

Designs firms such as Chermayeff and Geismar teach that it is a major design activity, for the embracing of a corporate identification.

One example, Paul Rand creates a last legacy of the Bauhaus and Herbert Bayer universal trademark.