Also: son of dramatist Wolfgang Bauer. He grew up with the Austrian avant-garde, and studied with Christian Ludwig Attersee. Equipped with a drawing pencil, crayon or steel wire, his preferred working materials, he visualises experiences and thoughts, sometimes dense, sometimes minimalistic, sometimes drenched in colours, sometimes in black and white. A series of these widely differing cycles are now assembled in one book, published with the artist's intention to uncover coherences and tell one consistent story. For the Brand Unit this project was a big challenge as to find a design which does justice to the range and density of the artist's work, yet, remains clear and reduced and wouldn't lose the thread.

The desire for authenticity, tradition and quality as a counteracting trend against globalised mass consumption has become a frequently observable phenomenon of a new consumer consciousness. Also in Vienna traditional handicraft businesses currently experience a renaissance. Their formula for success: passing on their expertise over several generations within their families, setting highest benchmarks of quality, and following a strong design orientation.

One example is the fur boutique Liska which is in family hands since the 1950s. Every work step of a traditional furrier is cultivated here, from the drying of the furs to the sewing of the last button. But also designers play an important role at Liska as they conceive coats in dialogue with the clients. And apart from own collections Liska also offers fur creations from internationally renowned fashion boutiques and garments and accessories by luxury brands.

What started initially as a customer magazine has now developed into a comprehensive corporate appearance for the fur boutique: from an advertisement campaign in the most important international fashion titles to a new website with integrated online store. The magazine style of the latter does not only convey topicality and a sophisticated chic, it also grants a sneak peek behind the scenes, that is the making of the haute couture of fur fashion.

In 1939 the first volume of photographs was published turning its author and photographer, the Austrian oceanographer Hans Hass into the pioneer of modern underwater photography. Ever since, photography technology has been revolutionised driving forward the exploration of the seas. Yet, it hasn’t changed the fact that the underwater world is still a wonderland to us humans – bizarre, eerie and mysterious. But maybe that exactly is what constitutes its very allure.

An allure that also Austrian artist Manfred Wakolbinger has succumbed to. For 20 years he has been photographing the marine world, just under the surface of the water. Influenced by his aesthetics as a fine artist, in particular as a sculptor who deals with form and space, he knows how to capture the idiosyncratic strangeness of lights and colours, and the polymorphic qualities of forms as a visual wealth.

The Brand Unit in turn, knows how to translate this wealth into a book and conceived, in collaboration with Manfred Wakolbinger, a comprehensive volume of his extraordinary underwater photographs.

For this reason, and measured against its number of inhabitants, Vienna is the largest cultural metropolis of the world with the highest density of cultural institutions and events. Reason enough for adding a cultural guide to the Style Edition of the Echo Medienhaus. Across all genres and eras you'll find the highlights of the city's event calendar and learn about top protagonists from Viennese cultural life as well as an off tour through undiscovered cultural activities in blocks of council flats. The design comes from the Brand Unit and is oriented towards the content: multi-layered, exciting, modern and confident.

The newest addition to the portfolio is the Style Edition which aims for the luxury and lifestyle segment: issue-specific magazines provide the newest trends and advices, basically live. The face, that is the visual identity of the series has been developed by the Brand Unit. The design allows a maximum of creative leeway for different contents providing a clear recognisability of sophistication. How does it work? For instance by means of a combination of fonts: one coherent font runs through all of the magazines, an additional one is layered on top and individually selected for each magazine. Or by means of including a guide section, a concept of the Brand Unit which has by now proven highly successful.

Values that are preferably communicated via the colour blue in the business world. Blue, however, can also come across as cold, boring, conservative.

Merit Commodity Partners is a solid, professional and trustworthy financial services provider specialising in the commodity market. A sincere business presence is essential here. This also applies to the website whose redesign brand unit was commissioned with. As a matter of course, the expectations were very high. A highly professional client, extremely complex contents, the demand for recognisable codes. All that without the colour blue.

What you now open is a kind of news magazine. The Financial Times in black and maroon, clearly arranged with an elegant, modern appearance. In terms of imagery, the focus was put on the aesthetics of pipelines, containers and bulk tanks while ordinary portrait images were replaced by friendly illustrations.

In order to continue the series of cooperation projects with, and surrounding, Helmut Lang, brand unit went on a search for key pieces from his career among his private customers, and found them not only in Elfie Semotan´s cupboard. Cordula Reyer, Marianne Kohn and other great personalities also granted them access to their wardrobes.

Two photo series have come into being, one was realized by fashion photographer Jork Weismann, and the other by Elfie Semotan herself. With Serbian-Australian top model Andrej Pejic one was able to find a congenial proponent of the Helmut Lang aesthetics. Famous for his androgynous looks, the shooting star presents both men´s wear and women´s wear, as for Gaultier during the latest Paris Fashion Weeks, for example. Helmut Lang, too, has designed unisex pieces right from the start of his career. This connection, Elfie Semotan made a concept for her shooting and photographed Andrej Pejic made up as a woman in gauzy, simple vintage shirts out of the archives of Helmut Lang. A unique symbiosis.

Both editorials are parts of the great Helmut Lang in house project by brand unit that is planned for a cultural project in cooperation with a museum.

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The framework for all these Helmut Lang projects was provided by Albert Handler in the form of a video.

In the style of an artistic documentary, he not only captured the working methods of photography artists Elfie Semotan and Jork Weismann, but also depicted Helmut Lang’s relevance in fashion history. At the same time, he also created a new way of dealing with the medium film which – in line with its fashion context – works like a moving image editorial.

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Already today, 1.4 million people throughout the world move to densely populated urban areas every week. This raises questions regarding the future of the city, as well as the city of the future: how is it possible, despite enormous growth, to secure a high quality of life while maintaining sustainable development?

Vienna is also about to face this challenge. The metropolis experiences an annual growth of 15,000 inhabitants. Depending on the energy source gas in terms of supply grids, around 300,000 more people will be using the public power supply by the year 2030. Wiener Stadtwerke, Austria´s biggest municipal facility service provider, is taking on a key role in that issue. With their network of associated companies in the fields of energy and traffic, it is their aim to contribute to the solution of questions regarding the future.

brand unit supports Wiener Stadtwerke in visualising their future-orientation with regards to content while maintaining their historically established visual brand. Thus, the colour codes of the associated companies have been integrated and the lettering made more dynamic. By modifying the logo only slightly yet sustainably, the logo can now be read as a network of the individual departments of the company and, as such, of the topics of the future.

Art connoisseurs immediately think of Informel, a style of modern abstract art which reached its zenith in the 1950s. As an antipole to geometric abstraction, informal painting oscillated between the dissolution and becoming of form: the brushstroke that was spontaneously applied created its own new form.

Just as avant-garde as the Informel artists are the fashion designers whose collections Wolfensson was the first to sell in Austria, starting in the mid 90s in Graz: Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Rick Owens, Marni, Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe or Yohji Yamamoto.

One of fashion’s long-standing taboos – in line with global protests from animal rights organisations  – fur has recently celebrated a comeback. Which, however, changes nothing about the fact that this fabric polarises like no other, demanding a great deal of courage, confidence as well as good insurance from its wearers. According to market research institute, Integral, 77 % of consumers in Austria are against animal breeding for the purpose of fur production. Not to mention that the fur coat still has an old-fashioned, conservative image.

Vienna-based traditional fur house Liska consistently stands out by collaborating with young international designers. Still, the house and its clientele are deemed conservative. The aim of a new customer magazine was to more specifically target a younger generation of fashion-conscious shoppers. A rewarding challenge for Brand Unit and its competence in avant-garde fashion. The result is classy and full of verve at the same time, equally contemporary and timeless. Understatement as a statement.

Still, there is a vital, creative fashion scene in this city. Over the past 10 years it has given rise to a generation of fashion designers who are successfully involved in the international world of fashion. Labels like Peter Pilotto, Petar Petrov, Ute Ploier or Wendy&Jim sustain their positions with independent profiles and ambitious, intellectual concepts.

Unit F association for contemporary fashion, a competence centre which through “excellence-funding”, consultancy and its international network provides a vital contribution to the professionalisation of the scene, has been responsible for this development. The annual highlight of its activities is the festival for fashion & photography. It is a cultural festival in a cultural metropolis, whose very own identity is reflected in the festival and where fashion is presented as an economic and cultural factor at the intersection between tradition and innovation.

As cooperation partners with Unit F, brand unit was responsible for the festival magazine accompanying the 11 festival for fashion & photography. The core element of the festival’s communication and PR measures stands for cultural and economic competence – from its design to the contributions of the authors, its editorials and distribution. Distributed as a supplement in Austria’s most important art and business magazines, it manages to create awareness for Austrian avant-garde fashion and its supporters also within a large audience.

From Miuccia Prada to Giorgio Armani, Yves Saint Laurent and Tod´s, more and more big fashion brands are making use of this medium.  And this trend is popular among recipients, too. Dita von Teese’s 2008 online advert for Wonderbra was one of the first examples for this: within the first three days after publication on Youtube, the spot had been viewed by almost 120,000 visitors.

Apart from the festival’s campaign and magazine, which are located at the intersection between art and fashion, the festival for fashion & photography, in cooperation with brand unit, has established another innovation based on the medium film. The Austria Fashion Awards are well established as the highlight of the festival for fashion & photography. These awards, which are given by public authorities and private sponsors, are the highest accolade for national fashion designers. The awarding of the prizes as part of a gala ceremony was for a long time accompanied by fashion shows of the prize winners. Together with brand unit, a new form of presentation has been developed: designed like editorials, the designers and their collections are introduced in video clips with both, styling and models, following an equally exceptional and unconventional script; in 2011, for example, with parcour artists.

The answer can be found on the cover of the catalogue accompanying the exhibition “Elfie Semotan Kurt Kocherscheidt co Bruno Gironcoli”: “In a way, Kocherscheidt alludes to the same two-headedness of modernity as Gironcoli, only under reversed conditions.” All clear? Another answer could be that behind both of these works stand two brilliant Austrian artist personalities who unfortunately died way too young. This, however, still does not provide any clues of the third person, Elfie Semotan. This information shall be provided here: the international fashion photography icon was married to Kocherscheidt and has provided very idiosyncratic portraits of Gironcoli´s works for this exhibition, making it an exhibition concept which is based on biographic circumstances or, even, coincidences. And just for that it is terrific. Much like the catalogue, with which Brand Unit manages to pursue the concept in printed form, provoking the readers’ free associations.

The former real estate developer from Los Angeles has realised her lifelong dream with Suite 102: a concept store and showroom for fashion, design, art, literature and other ultimate pleasures of the highest level.

brand unit provided its visual identity. Their formula for it: elegance paired with a touch of savagery. From business cards to website, an element from the fine arts is the leitmotif: black, dripping colour, applied like on a canvas, forms the graphic core element of the new corporate identity.

And is it possible to combine the desired broad appeal with ambitious content? Brand Unit says “yes!” and regularly reports on the innovative Austrian fashion scene in customer magazine Maxima, which is designed like a fashion and lifestyle magazine. After all, Maxima is not just any magazine, having been awarded Europe’s Best Costumer Magazine in 2010.

Elfie Semotan, the doyenne of international fashion photography from Austria knows how to take a different approach. In an intellectually humorous manner she deals with beauty and glamour focusing on its fragility and brittleness. To her mind, beauty only evolves from a blend of interesting appearance and a person’s inner qualities. Thereby she has not only taken up an important position in the fashion and advertising world but also in the world of arts where she has expanded her access to beauty and aesthetics on the field of objects and scenes from everyday life.

This was the case in an exhibition initiated by the University of Applied Arts Vienna in spring 2012 honouring Semotan’s work. The apparent ease of the mise-en-scène in the baroque exhibition premises of the Heiligenkreuzerhof runs further through the exhibition catalogue. For this occasion, the Brand Unit has developed an extraordinary design concept. When opening the cover, the reader will face a “naked” book with visible stitch binding detached from the cover. The ultra-thin paper as well as the repeatedly interspersed blank pages underline the effect of ease, fragility and transparency. Supported by room sketches with post stamp sized photos of empty spaces the book allows the reader to imagine and experience the exhibition all over again – as fragmentary scenes of beauty.

Apart from yielding a whole new generation of self-confident, individual and successful fashion designers Unit F has also provided fertile soil for a new fashion scene. For the first time, Unit F in cooperation with the city magazine Wien live has now published a compressed overview of the city's many events, initiatives, stores and craft enterprises: the VIENNA FASHION CODEX. It's a booklet that fits in every handbag. Published in both German and English. With removable timetable for this year's fashion events.

For this project, the Brand Unit has developed an independent visual identity that is different from any other print title on the market – be it calendar or fashion magazine – and put a highly individual stamp on the product: with a specially designed stamp font serving as a section divider. New to the concept are the vintage prints on the cover as well as the best-of fashion shoots 2011 encompassing a selection of high-class fashion photographers who have been invited to contribute their favourite shots.

The Kitzbühel WebTV demonstrates it in historical film shots: in the early 1920s, a train from Munich brought the first ski tourists to Kitzbühel, soon followed by the international jet set, attracted by Toni Sailer, the charming ski instructor at the skiing school “Rote Teufel”, hand-sewn leather ski gloves, or the Hahnenkamm, the oldest ski race in the world. Kitzbühel had become the ideal setting for the annual winter get-together of the world's rich. And nothing has changed until today.

Just in time for the season opening 2011/12 the Echo Medienhaus has devoted the first print product of the Style Edition to Kitzbühel, and reports live about the hottest addresses and events for day and night. The Brand Unit has provided the appropriate visual appearance, thereby staying true to the Kitz-Style motto classic with a twist.

The real estate developer with impressive addresses in Vienna and Graz describes himself as unconventional and creative. These are also the adjectives charactersing the new website whose contents were devised by brand unit.

The focus is less on the product and more on the context. And that is the culture, the environment and the lifestyle surrounding real estates.

Not only with regard to text and imagery, of course.

Animated graphics and videos with property owners and architects tell those stories that bring real estates to life. The medium of the “image” video has not only been given a new face, but also new contents.

Not so much the master himself – well versed in the art of thinking forward. He famously shredded the remains to form sculptures out of the material. Already before that, Brand Unit accomplished a coup: together with photographer Elfie Semotan, who, amongst others things, became famous for her collaboration with Helmut Lang, they received exclusive access to the burnt-out archives. The outcome is a unique photographic documentation which will be the basis of a large-scale art project still in the planning stages.

A previous, exclusive project had laid the foundation for Brand Unit´s relationship with Helmut Lang. In 2007, the team managed to acquire his services for Unit F´s “Modebuch” – a book dedicated to the history of the Austrian fashion scene. Lang contributed a 20-page editorial; a mixture of his private collection of letters, postcards and photos of his designer and artist friends.

And that not only in technical disciplines, but especially with regard to their method of interaction and how communication processes are carried out, how organisational units are designed and how learning processes are initiated. A successful example for an innovative intervention into the social structure of a company was recently provided by OMV, Austria´s biggest international oil and gas enterprise.
Karin Brunnmayr-Grüneis, Head of Gas & Power, and OMV management together designed a development process for the latest enterprise of the OMV group – OMV Trading. Brunnmayr-Grüneis is convinced that the entry of a name into the commercial register alone is not enough. She is of the opinion that every top manager must also see themselves as an “architect of social structures” and implement actions that fill a brand with life.

For the project at hand, brand unit was called upon. The task was to interview all senior management staff and to record these on video. The aim was to visualise their shared intention - to paint a general picture that shows who and what OMV Trading is. In this case the medium video was extremely crucial, as the enterprise at that time was not yet operating in the market and had thus not yet produced anything visible. In this respect, the video was the first visible, jointly created product. Watching the video, you can feel the brandbeat. And the contribution of every individual is visible, as Karin Brunnmayr-Grüneis puts it, “a company and its brand is the sum of what each individual contributes.”

From concept to the setting, brand unit, in cooperation with the client, created an architecture whose result impresses. “One can very strongly feel the common spirit and strength that the team gained from the product which they created as a collective. Finally, it has been revealed who and what OMV Trading is. The shared body, the brand, is filled with life and no longer merely one-dimensionally present on paper”, believes Karin Brunnmayr-Grüneis. And with Sven Withofs was the right person to conduct these interviews for his ability to create a positive dialogue atmospheres enabling people to really show themselves and make their contribution visible.

And a person like this usually also has an exuberant personality whose madness is hard to contain. However, this was precisely the challenge on the task of interviewing Wolfgang Joop for Welt am Sonntag on the occasion of the presentation of his furniture collection for Neue Wiener Werkstätte. And, of course, Wolfgang Joop did outtalk Ulrike Tschabitzer-Handler very charmingly, yet relentlessly at the venerable Hotel Sacher in Vienna. However, nothing better could have happened, because the quality of the interview lies in its authenticity and, consequently, in the decision of the Brand Unit authors to leave the master’s direct quotes to a large extent unedited. Just brilliant!

Their love for horses. More than that, their unconventional success stories. These can be found in an exceptional magazine by the name of A Guide Magazine, an in-house product of brand unit. It gathers historical and present-day success stories of creative heads and companies that have been growing over generations. Their common denominator is the combination of tradition and innovation, of transferred knowledge and up to date interpretation, of family structures that have evolved over time and the spirit of innovation.

A Guide Magazine detects those values and attitudes that become important again in times of massive economic and social change, which we are experiencing at the moment. By successfully opposing anonymous mass production and global lifestyles. And setting a new benchmark in doing so. An objective that is also pursued by the magazine itself through a combination of intellectual content and innovative design. After all, already the first two issues have been featured in professional publications such as Turning Pages and Page Unlimited.

It is above all small and middle-sized companies which are the most hesitant. Wirtschaftskammer Wien, as a representative of the interests of all companies in Vienna – 80 % of which are small and middle-sized enterprises – knows that design is an essential competitive factor in the economy. This is why it is heavily involved with design topics, amongst other things through its partnership with Vienna Design Week. The annual Vienna design festival has for years very successfully been organising a unique, international format: small companies are brought together with designers in order to fathom the challenges and chances of collaborations within an experimental context. A concept that has stood the test of time: the majority of the now 30 participating companies now permanently collaborate with designers.

Reason enough for Wirtschaftskammer Wien and Vienna Design Week to publish a joint design compendium illustrating the “why” and “how” with the help of the festival´s best practice examples. brand unit was commissioned with the challenge to design the compendium in line with the topic by both showing design competence, but also granting orientation and compatibility to those enterprises that still need convincing.

Because that is when the festival’s image campaign is launched. Every year, fashion and photography, fashion and art merge in an extraordinary symbiosis in the campaign posters.

The flirtations between fashion and art as a game of mutual attraction started more than 100 years ago, with movements like Art Nouveau or Futurism. Nevertheless, the boundaries were very clearly drawn back then. Today, they are increasingly blurring, a new global lifestyle has emerged as part of which art acts as an additional facet next to fashion, design, architecture, pop music and other cultural fields.

One of the most prestigious representatives of that genre is Austrian artist Erwin Wurm. Originally a sculptor, his artistic theme is the body. With subtle humour, he expands form and context of all things physical with the intention of transferring the concept of the sculptural into everyday life. When a pedestal is wearing a coat, for example, or an exhibition visitor slips into an oversized jumper in order to pose as a sculpture at their own discretion.

For the 2011 festival campaign, brand unit accomplished a very special coup: They brought together Erwin Wurm and the Grande Dame of fashion photography, Elfie Semotan. The result of this unique symbiosis between fashion and art were clothing sculptures created from the designs of Austrian fashion labels, shot with subtlety and confidence. The campaign was presented at Vienna´s Museum of Art History.

In any case, this can be the result when a product designer approaches the topic of fur with the task being to produce suspense and irritation in order to detach fur from its conservative context and taboo-afflicted image.

The directive was set up by brand unit, who also had the idea to bring together a renowned product designer and a top photographer for an editorial shoot. The project was commissioned by Kopenhagen Fur – one of the biggest and oldest fur markets in the world.

As is generally known, hides and furs belong to the oldest goods of global trade. However, for many centuries they were gained from hunting. With the wildlife conservation agreement, which was set up in Washington at the beginning of the 1970s, trading furs of wild and endangered species was strongly restricted. As a consequence, a rethinking of the topic took place.

Today, the market concentrates on furs gained from species-appropriate breeding or on hides left over in farming; wild hunting today only amounts to 15 %.

However, with annual growth rates between 5 and 10 % since the end of the twentieth century, fur trading has moved from Europe and Northern America to China and Russia.

Kopenhagen Fur strongly campaigns for socially and economically responsible trading. In combination with tradition and innovation, the topic of fur is also opened up to new manufacturing techniques and fields of application at the highest creative level. Best example is the brand unit Editorial.

This trend is supported by the growing utilisation of online tickets and virtual travel guides; services which Austrian Airlines is counting on with their red|tickets and the red|guide. Brand Unit was commissioned with the contents of the online travel guide for the 26 cities that are currently on offer.

A task like this means the challenge of combining the contents in such a way that the greatest number of experiences can be delivered within the shortest possible time, while still keeping far off the beaten tourist tracks. Because the city tourist, who, on average, stays for two days, wants to dive into the pulsating city life as authentically as possible and not act any differently than the locals – which means knowing their insiders’ tips.

For this challenge, brand unit activated its international network and came up with a balanced mix of top addresses, secret tips and atmospheric imagery by collaborating with pioneers of the local scenes. Thus, the uniqueness of every destination, its individuality and personality can be felt and experienced. A formula for success that also characterised previous projects pocket guide, A Guide Magazine as well as found by Le Cool Nokia.

An urban destination not only lives on its tourist attractions but also on its culture, the quality of life, the ambiance and differentiation. Cities are increasingly becoming brand personalities. Vienna, for example, positions itself as a city of world cultural heritage combining tradition and innovation at the highest level. The safety of the city, the tight network of art and cultural events and the high quality of life make Vienna one of the world’s most popular city destinations.

Every behaviour has a communicative nature, and it is not possible to not behave. But wrong or misunderstood behaviour can lead to misguided communication.

Communication is radical, says communications agency Media Consult. Uncompromising, directed, precise. Something that touches the essence. brand unit and Media Consult are partners. And Albert Handler, as senior expert, is the consultant regarding all things to do with branding. For him, a brand has to start off from its identity, the foundation of all forms of communication. Maybe even the root.

And they not only choose the seat covers, as an outdated cliché would have it. Still, the automobile industry does not at all – or badly – cater to this important target group, continuing instead to primarily appeal to male instincts – not least through erotic imagery.

Therefore, the challenge, put forward by the company Ford, to specifically address young women via a direct mailing was a job that brand unit gladly accepted, coming up with a novel magazine concept that responds to female intelligence. Small moments of happiness and relaxation, the joy of travelling and the practical sides of fashionable accessories stir a craving for the new car with empathy and humour.

These are the new production factors of the 21^st century, the information society. Allegedly. Because it is not always perfectly clear how exactly ideas and visions develop into marketable products and services, and knowledge manifests in jobs.

“We support what the global market demands”, are the introductory words of an information campaign initiated by the Austrian Institute of Technology, the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology, as well as the Federation of Austrian Industries. The creative heads behind the campaign: Media Consult and Brand Unit. Full-page advertisements featured in the most important Austrian print media point to assistance measures and inform about Austria's innovation strategies. In a way that you cannot ignore them.