The Internet presence of eastern Westphalian door and window hardware makers FSB has won an internationally coveted iF design award. The 16-strong jury went through a total of 1,140 entries from 25 countries this year and the www.fsb.de website, revamped in 2006, was amongst the prize-winners.

Good design, for FSB, involves visuals that are of necessity utilisable. This requirement applies in equal measure to its products and to its corporate publicity. Use value and brand world continue to be on an equal footing in the company’s Internet presence. The corporate design developed by Otl Aicher in the 1980s was geared towards analogue media and has been constantly refined in the intervening years as well as also being got fit for the digital world. FSB is now harnessing its established design philosophy with a view to likewise rendering door handles graspable in a virtual context and, to this end, is creating a brand world on the web that addresses both private end-consumers and parties from the “project” construction sector such as architects and fabricators.

B2B and B2C forms of communication are not mutually exclusive in the view of the Brakel enterprise: B2B material is generally sober, rational and information-driven. Frequently, however, the brand experience so crucial to B2C communication gets submerged amongst downloads, fitting instructions and price information. Making sure the brand didn’t get stifled by product information was the declared aim behind the revamping of our Internet presence. One key notion relates to portraying target group-specific information vertically and not in discrete domains through horizontal differentiation. By interconnecting product descriptions, 3D representations and handle images within virtual spaces comprising an online product catalogue and online shop (by dint of an integrated flash application), each user group is offered just the right depth of information. Interactive specials – e.g. on the “DuoHandles/HandleDuos” project in which a real symposium plus exhibition are recreated and rendered accessible on a virtual level – complete the offering and provide an opportunity to reconnoitre not just the product-oriented offering but also an attitude towards design and architecture that is part and parcel of the FSB brand world.

Usability is a question of there being concord between design, language and structure. The aim was to make the structure as flat, the design as clear and the language as precise as possible. Information is offered to the user where it is actually needed. Architects and planners, for instance, do not have to look for CAD data in a download area, as said data are directly attached to the product. Users determine by means of their specific target-group requirements the manner in which they approach FSB products and the information of relevance to them. Whereas end-consumers are guided by a door handle’s initial optical impression, its virtual inclusion in specimen residential environments and its four-digit model number, trade stockists and fabricators find technical details and the product number required for ordering purposes in the same application or else via an online catalogue that meets extended information requirements. Products ranging from door and window hardware through electronic access control systems to barrier-free handle systems of relevance to sectoral target groups can be configured using a database application and directly transferred to FSB’s order completion process. Information-led discovery is as one with the experience of FSB’s brand world.

Dealings with visual resources reveal how marvellously well functionality and aesthetics can complement one another. Greater store has come to attach to colour in the course of FSB’s evolution. The shades of grey long prevalent in its corporate image have now been augmented by a spectrum of colourful hues that are acquiring an ordering quality within the framework of the company’s Internet presence.

The company has had recourse to Le Corbusier’s “polychromie architecturale” colour system for this purpose, one that equates like no other with the well-conceived integration of colour into architecture. These colours have similarly been incorporated into analogue publicity media such as the FSB Manual - thus further expanding the company’s pool of corporate design resources.

The iF communication design award 2007 will be held on 31 August 2007. Further information on the competition can be found at www.ifdesign.de – FSB’s award-winning sites at www.fsb.de