The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2021–2022
Bahlsen explodes its blue signature across 80+ products with a per-flavor color system
Auge Design restages Bahlsen's whole portfolio: the blue signature explodes across every pack while background color does the flavor talking.
Bahlsen
What it had to solve
Bahlsen, the German biscuit maker founded in 1889 and market leader at home with BAHLSEN and LEIBNIZ, realized its identity and packaging had not moved with the times and had lost a defined personality. It asked Auge Design for a revolution — a vision of the brand ten years forward and, above all, help in becoming an icon.
How it works
Bahlsen is the German family enterprise whose biscuit roots go back to Hermann Bahlsen's 1889 Hanover factory, and whose BAHLSEN and LEIBNIZ brands lead the sweet-biscuit market at home. But a century of successful sub-brands had left the masterbrand's identity and packaging without a defined personality — it had not moved with the times.
The company asked Auge Design for a revolution, a vision of the brand ten years forward and, most of all, help becoming an icon. The studio answered by exploding the most crucial element of the heritage — the blue signature — across the packaging, and combining it with a multicolor background system that changes with the flavors.
The new architecture spans more than 80 products in four different ranges. The signature and the product photography stay coherent everywhere — biscuits are staged like art, centered on the signature above a graphic bronze pedestal, with a 360-degree view of the product wrapping the pack — while each range gets its own colors, style and storytelling so the system stays both iconic and functional across formats and materials.
The relaunch turned years of scattered archive assets into one confident visual language. Bahlsen's CEO noted that many agencies had trawled the archives for the blue signature and the TET logo, but Auge was the first to pull them together into a balanced, bold yet classic concept — work that earned design-industry recognition and a place in D&AD's awards archive.
Why it lands
- One shared signature across 80 products turned the brand itself into the packaging system, instead of letting each product line shout separately.
- The multicolor background system let flavor do the differentiating work while the signature guaranteed recognition on every pack.
- Treating biscuits as art objects on a pedestal gave a mass-market commodity the craft cues of a premium brand.
- Drawing on heritage assets like the blue signature and TET logo made the redesign feel inevitable rather than invented.
- A modular architecture across formats meant the icon could flex from biscuit roll to gift box without breaking.
What it did
Decades of archival assets were pulled into one system that made the whole shelf read as one bold brand instead of a pile of sub-brands; Bahlsen's CEO called the result beautifully balanced, bold yet classic. The relaunch was covered across the design press, won Dieline Awards recognition, and is archived by D&AD.
What you can take
When a portfolio outgrows its brand, find the one asset everyone remembers and make it the system: a single signature plus a color logic beats 80 competing designs.
Since then
Bahlsen's global packaging relaunch arrived as the company, which reported around 540 million euros in turnover in 2019, pushed to make its masterbrand iconic across Europe. Auge Design's system — the exploded blue signature, flavor color system and pedestal-staged product photography — was picked up by the design press, recognized at the Dieline Awards, and archived by D&AD as a reference point for turning a long heritage into a unified visual language. The case stands as an example of a century-old family brand choosing coherence over the accumulated noise of sub-brand packaging.
Sources
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card