Siemens is a leading technology company – focused on industry, infrastructure, transport, and healthcare. In such a broad and global context, a consistent visual identity is essential, both to strengthen the brand and to improve the user experience. Colour plays a key role in this effort. Michael Küpper, Senior Industrial Designer and Frank Zeitler, Industrial Design Manager share how NCS provides Siemens a systematic approach to colour management that ensures precision, efficiency and trust throughout the process.
About Siemens AG
Siemens is a leading technology company focused on industry, infrastructure, mobility, and healthcare. For 178 years, they have been developing technology that transforms the everyday, for everyone. Despite a global presence, Siemens has always remained deeply rooted in Germany, where the company was founded in 1847 in a Berlin backyard workshop.
Like no other company Siemens is at home both in the real world of hardware and the digital world of software. Their technologies connect the real and digital worlds, thus helping their customers around the world overcome their greatest challenges and become more competitive, resilient, and sustainable.
Their core businesses – Digital Industries, Smart Infrastructure, and Mobility – offer a comprehensive portfolio of hardware and software. Siemens supports the automation and digitalization of industries, makes infrastructure and buildings smarter and more efficient, and enables cleaner, more comfortable transportation.
Michael Küpper, Senior Industrial Designer
Michael has worked as an industrial designer for almost 20 years and has extensive experience in product design and design planning. He works in Siemens industrial design team, and his special focus is managing Siemens’ corporate colors. His main task is to support the team in the strategic use of the company’s colours as well as ensuring colour consistency and implementation in production.
Favourite colour: Siemens Petrol
Frank Zeitler, Industrial Design Manager
Frank Zeitler has been working with Industrial Design Management since 2006 for Siemens. He is responsible for the hardware design of their industrial products, which means he gives the products their shape, aesthetics, and brand identity, including logos, nameplates, lettering, and colour.
Favourite colour: Titanium Grey
Siemens AG on how working with NCS in colour management ensures a quality outcome
Colour consistency across products and suppliers
Siemens began its collaboration with NCS around ten years ago, as the company reorganised its process for defining and managing its own colours. The need for a system that could first help structure their existing colour palette led them to NCS, which has had a significant impact on their colour standardisation efforts. This is key when products use different materials or batches – the colour must stay consistent. NCS supports this with precise definitions and quality samples.
“NCS is a very good partner in the last years. And NCS gives us constant high quality in these samples we need. They are great experts at NCS. We are working together if we have concrete topics and challenges. Since we are working with NCS, we have, a clear defined process that helps us a lot to harmonise our products over different portfolios and materials.”
– Frank Zeitler, Industrial Design Manager, Siemens
Colour as a strategic design component
For Siemens, a reduced but consistent colour selection is a vital part of its brand identity. Rather than offering a broad palette, a selection of carefully chosen shades is used, such as Siemens Petrol and TI Grey. These colours recur across different products and product segments – a deliberate strategy to create a unified expression and facilitate product recognition.
“Colour accuracy is very important to us because we have a huge portfolio, and colour is one of the key aspects of design for us. So basically it’s really important that you are able to reproduce the definition you have, every time, over the years, with the same colours.”
More efficient communication and colour accuracy
Siemens uses various NCS products including colour samples to ensure colour fidelity during project implementation, as well as NCS colour definitions and coding systems that serve as standards for both internal and external communication. Furthermore, knowledge transfer from NCS strengthens the design team’s ability to effectively incorporate color in product design.
Having the entire company speak the same “colour language” has simplified communication between the design team and product development. With clear NCS codes, it becomes easier to avoid misunderstandings and ensure that all parties are working towards the same goal. “It saves time and reduces the risk of errors, as we have a common reference for what colour means in practice,” explains Michael.
“The fewer uncertainties you have, the more efficient the communication becomes. It’s easier and there are fewer obstacles because the communication is improved a lot. That’s basically on the basis of the NCS colour system.”
– Michael Küpper, Senior Industrial Designer
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