From a failed moth repellent to a design legacy

Failure is the mother of success. No other idea could better capture the chain of events that followed an unsuccessful advertising campaign back in 1939, when Novartis predecessor Geigy launched a new moth repellent that did not resonate with its targeted audience. For the longest time, the advertising campaigns by Geigy, whose origins date back to 1758, were run by external agencies, which would try to interpret whatever brand and product guidelines were in place at that time – if at all. The advertising efforts were a relatively straightforward task. Geigy was mostly working in the dyestuff business, requiring business-to-business advertising, which was more technical in nature and not designed to win over the mass consumer market – although its early color dye packages look stunning. But this changed by the late 1930s. The moth repellent was the company’s first foray into the consumer market. Around the same time Geigy also started to launch some of its first pharmaceutical products, which could still be marketed directly before the direct-to-consumer advertising ban in the 1950s. The confluence of these two developments led Geigy manager René Rudin to push for the creation of an in-house advertising agency. The goal was to tackle “any problem with advertising in close collaboration with technicals and salespeople,” as he wrote to management. Rudin’s rationale was plausible, but not industry standard. While advertising became increasingly important for success in the fast-growing consumer business sector, most companies relied on external agencies. Rudin’s argument ran as follows: Given the increased complexity of Geigy’s own business, which by the 1940s included consumer products, pharmaceuticals, dyestuffs, and chemicals, the company would require a team of highly skilled experts to avoid repetition of the botched moth repellent campaign. Management followed his advice. By 1941, Rudin was leading the newly established Propaganda unit – a term not yet marred by history, which would later be changed to “Werbeabteilung.” The unit would not only attract talent from the local Basel and Zurich schools of design. The advertising unit would prove so influential that the work coming out of this creative laboratory would influence generations of designers to come and rewrite how companies think about corporate identity and brand.

A principled start Before Rudin started to build a team that would include artists, graphic designers, lithographers, writers, scientific research assistants, printers, production and media staff, among many others, he developed a strategy, which he detailed a few years later in a paper to management. It was a clear-cut, remarkable manifesto, which would guide the unit for the next 30 years under Rudin’s leadership and serve as a blueprint for many advertisers around the world – balancing ethical, artistic, commercial, and governance considerations, with the goal to boost Geigy’s products and its reputation. The most striking element was his strategic view that the new advertising unit “must strive to give our propaganda its own character, with the long-term goal of creating a distinct Geigy style.” It was a rare position in the fledgling advertising landscape in which individualistic expression still trumped coherence of style. During the early years of the 20th century, most advertising focused on print and was oriented towards the flowery and exuberant style inspired by Art Nouveau, best exemplified by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha. Most works were still heavily indebted to the realism of the late 19th century, although Toulouse-Lautrec’s and Mucha’s work was already stylized and easily recognizable. Rudin’s clear positioning regarding the creation of a unique and – most importantly – a coherent style was not the only remarkable feat in his attempt to create what would later become known as corporate identity. He was also capable of building a strong team of exceptional talents. Among his young hires from Basel and Zurich were Max Schmid, who became the unit’s first art director, Karl Gerstner, Gérard Ifert, Rudin’s sister Nelly, Roland Aeschlimann, Fred Troller, and Steff Geissbühler, among many others, who would leave their mark and become leading designers and artists in their own right. For almost three decades before the unit was disbanded following the merger with cross-town rival Ciba and Rudin’s departure, their work helped establish the individual Geigy brands and enhance the company’s reputation, so much so that Geigy design became synonymous with quality, style, and ingenuity.

An answer to frugality That Switzerland would become a globally acclaimed industry leader with an outstanding design and marketing tradition was anything but likely during much of the 19th and early 20th century, given the country’s limited size and relatively small population. A further disadvantage was its lack of natural resources. Likewise, the country’s highly diverse population, which is split along four language regions and 26 cantons, created continuous political and cultural friction. But unlike other resource-poor and culturally diverse countries, the Swiss were able to turn these weaknesses into strengths. Already at the beginning of the 19th century, before modern Switzerland was founded, the Swiss began to invest heavily in human capital, building schools and universities and setting up rigorous apprenticeship standards. Likewise, the country worked towards creating a carefully balanced political system that would try to equalize between the different ethnic and religious groups, bigger cities and rural areas as well as learning to put weight behind its political neutrality. All of this created a culture and mindset that was prone to make the most out of the little that was available. “If you look at where the Swiss design tradition comes from, it has a lot to do with the lack of natural resources,” said Christian Brändle, director of the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich, which in 2009 curated the first holistic overview of Geigy’s design works. Watchmaking and printing set the tone. “Switzerland had to learn very early how to create great added value with very little material. Watchmaking is a perfect example. People worked for weeks on tiny pieces of metal to create something of extraordinary precision. Out of this competence came the printing industry, and from printing came graphic design,” Brändle said.

Christian Brändle, director of the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich.

In search of a new design The focus on quality, the deeply embedded mindset to do more with less as well as the cultural openness to new ideas helped create a design culture that met with a deep longing for clarity, precision, and innovation. “After the Second World War, Europe was in ruins, and Swiss graphic design offered the world a completely new approach,” Brändle said. “Swiss graphic design was absolutely rational, dry, and serious. While it is not spectacular, and it never really was, it lasts forever. It is remarkably resistant to trends. It is precise, stable, and professional. There are no jokes, no unnecessary decoration, no fuss. It is clear, direct, and built to endure.” Geigy was almost ideally placed to use that language. The company was science-based, internationally active and dependent on credibility. Its products ranged from chemicals and dyes to pharmaceuticals and consumer goods, each requiring different kinds of explanation. As business complexity increased, the more valuable a disciplined visual system became. “Geigy understood that the values embodied by Swiss graphic design were also the values of the company itself,” Brändle explained. “That is why they worked with the best designers of their time. It was not decoration. It was a reflection of who they were.” For Brändle, Geigy’s success was due to its ability to find a visual language that felt consistent with the company’s substance. The posters, brochures, packaging, and scientific materials that emerged from the unit were clear, inventive, and exacting because the designers were working in dialogue with the people who understood the products.

Working together Brändle sees this culture of collaboration as the defining feature of the era. “If you look back at the 1950s, what made Geigy special was that the company and the designers were both operating at the highest level of competence in their respective fields,” he said. “There was an unusually close collaboration between the people responsible for science and the people responsible for visual communication. The designers were not simply decorating finished products. They were deeply engaged with the substance of what the company was doing. That collaboration is what created such extraordinary work,” Brändle added. Works such as Stephan Geissbühler’s posters for pain killer Tanderil, which quote the work of modernist artists such as Kazemir Malevich or Roland Aeschlimann’s packaging for antiseptic Sisoteran with its convincing simplicity of an inflamed intestine still feel modern today and were considered masterpieces in their time. Likewise, the functional yet stunningly impressive canister by Markus Löw carries the aura of art and not just its content – a mite control agent. The work, consequently, became widely admired. Geigy design won awards and became associated with quality, intelligence, and ingenuity. It was compared with the design cultures of IBM, Olivetti, and Braun, companies that understood that design could express organizational values as powerfully as products or slogans. The broader visual environment also reinforced Geigy’s rise. Around the 1940s and 1950s, designers such as Josef Müller-Brockmann and Emil Ruder helped systematize and popularize the grid-based approach that became a hallmark of Swiss graphic design. The method improved legibility and clarity while allowing more flexible layouts within a disciplined structure.

Another breakthrough came in 1957, when Swiss designers Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann introduced Helvetica. While it was not the first sans-serif typeface, it became the most globally recognizable expression of Swiss graphic clarity, especially after Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda used the font for the New York subway’s signage system. “When Helvetica was designed in 1957, it was not the first sans-serif typeface, but it became a tremendous success,” Brändle said. “Everybody wanted Helvetica. Its influence spread around the world, from corporate identities to transportation systems. If you look at New York today, you can still see how deeply Swiss graphic design shaped the visual language of modern life. It succeeded because it expressed values people trusted: clarity, order, precision, and reliability.”

Heritage as an opportunity Those same values are why the Geigy heritage remains relevant to Novartis, which has redesigned its brand and corporate identity, both quoting its legacy while at the same time working towards creating a modern, fresh, and optimistic look that reflects the company’s values and scientific mission. Brändle believes Novartis has a strong foundation as the company has “an extraordinary and entirely credible connection to one of the most important graphic design traditions in the world. Going back to that heritage is not nostalgia. It is a genuine opportunity.” The opportunity, however, comes with a challenge as scientific and medical messages are not easy to transport. For Brändle, the solution lies in the close collaboration between the different teams. “Novartis has the possibility to stand out because its history and its connection to graphic design culture are authentic.”

Yellow was among Geigy’s defining colors.

“What Novartis is producing as a company is scientifically fascinating, but laboratories, pills, and molecules are often difficult to communicate visually,” Brändle said. “That is exactly why there is such enormous potential.” For Brändle, the challenge lies in translating what these medicines do to the human body into visual forms that people immediately understand. “Good illustration and good design cross language barriers. They speak directly to people. Looking back at Geigy shows that this can be done. Looking forward, it shows that it should be done again,” Brändle said. The failed moth repellent campaign could have remained a small embarrassment in the archive of a growing Basel company. Instead, it exposed a structural weakness and prompted a structural answer. Geigy did not simply ask for better advertisements. It built a culture in which science, commerce, and design could meet. Novartis continues this tradition as its brand remains true to its scientific origins and as the company, whose main typeface, Volta, is an homage to Helvetica, continues to nurture a collaborative culture in which science and design remain in constant contact, in which clarity trumps clutter, and in which design is created in the service of patients. Its great legacy is a motivation for the future.

History of Novartis Lasting images. From a failed moth repellent to a design legacy Text Goran Mijuk. Photos Adriano Biondo and Novartis Heritage and Company Archives. Back in the 1940s, Novartis predecessor Geigy was one of Basel’s leading chemical companies. That it would also morph into one of the most acclaimed design factories of the 20th century was not in the cards when a failed advertising campaign forced the company to rethink its approach, creating a design legacy that is being felt to this day.

Clear lines and a balanced color palette were the hallmark of Geigy’s early marketing designs.

Geigy’s designers worked closely with researchers to create convincing and scientifically acurate designs.

To celebrate its strong brand legacy, the Novartis Heritage and Company Archives set up a small exhibition in Basel.