Understanding the 2.5th dimension: modelling the graphic language of products

Recognizing a product of a specific brand without seeing the logo is difficult. But for companies it is important to distinguish themselves from competitors with a consistent portfolio, which will be easily recognized by their target consumers. The recognition of brands and their associated brand values can take place in different ways. In this paper a framework is discussed to analyze a brand at different levels of graphical dimensions. The proposed framework distinguishes the difference between graphics (2D), such as a logo or a text; form and shape elements (3D); and everything in-between (2,5D), which we will call ‘graphical elements’. Examples of such graphical elements are the protruding letters on a beer bottle of Grolsch, the characteristic grill of a car or the illuminated apple in a Mac Book. The framework, based on the work of Karjalainen & Warell, was developed further within an educational setting. In an elective master course, students developed a product for a specific brand using the most remarkable design features of the brand. The results of the course showed that modelling the 2.5th dimension of the products actually had a great impact on the translation of the brand values of the analyzed brands into new designs. The integration of these ‘graphical elements’ is often underexposed, but this paper shows that they can play an important role in the recognition of a brand and its brand values.