GE: A Brand Analysis

General Electric is the 13th largest company in the world making 11 billion dollars of pure profit. Spanning 63 countries with their hands in 25 different industries there is almost nowhere that GE isn't as well. With a brand as huge as theirs, let's analyze some of the current design behind one of the largest Fortune 500 companies.

The first and most prominent part of the GE design is the most expected. Clean and organized. Dating back over 50 years the international style is very well known and accepted. It offers the best organization for multiple languages using a clean grid system with as little clutter as possible. This is particularly important in a web based environment, because it has allowed GE to maintain a very consistent look across all the websites it maintains for those 63 countries.

The second most prominent part of the GE design is probably the least noticed. GE uses a proprietary typeface named Inspira, designed by Michael Abbink at Wolff Olins. Having a typeface that isn't used by anyone else for anything else is an important step towards a universally recognized brand. When people who have been exposed to a specific typeface in relation to only one company, they can see it anywhere without anything but context and know it's from that company.

The third most prominent part is their logo. It's a common misperception that the logo is the most important part of brand design. In truth, the brand design consists of multiple equally important parts and the logo is just one of them (I can go into this in detail in another post). In GE's case they downplay their logo a lot. On their products and sites it tends to be a fairly small mark, allowing the products and words to speak for themselves. With the size of GE there's a significantly reduced need to push brand recognition with a logo.

The fourth most prominent part of the GE design is probably as under-appreciated as their typeface: photography. GE uses a significant amount of it, and it's clear they understand the importance of high quality work. Almost all of their photography consists of high resolution, well framed, artistic photographs. This kind of quality adds an extra layer of confidence for any of their customers because we are naturally attracted to things and images that look good.

What can we learn from GE? While we can't say that the brand design is what made GE the business powerhouse it is, it has without a doubt made it as recognizable as it is which has definitely helped GE garner more business. They have put in the effort to ensure their brand design is a rock solid foundation for them to do business on, because that's what brand design is: a foundation.