Prof. Rasmus Giesel

Stadt + Wappen – Tradition & Moderne

BA Student

Daniel Schreck

Bachelor Thesis

Cities compete with each other and therefore need a strong brand to differentiate themselves from one another to remain attractive to residents, tourists and the economy. In order to differentiate these brands visually the cities are searching for unique selling points which can be found among other things in a city coat of arms.

Based on this statement student Daniel Schreck wrote and designed this book for his theoretical part of his bachelor thesis. The goal was to research the redesign process of city brands with the focus on city coat of arms, their historical development and current potential in the implementation.

The first three chapters in the book give the reader an in depth overview about the topic of heraldic and coat of arms. The student interviewd several design agencies, that were involved in current redesigns of city brands and analysed different recent solutions for the cities of Helsinki, Olso and Vienna, all evolving around a modern interpretation of the coat of arms.

Insights of the theoretical part were basis of Daniel Schrecks development of a rebranding for the German City of Leipzig, which you can find here.