adlerschmidt is an office for corporate design and information design, founded in 1989 by Florian Adler and Hans-Peter Schmidt. Besides numerous brand images, the office designs exhibitions, digital applications as well as guidance and orientation systems for public and private institutions. Since 2014 adlerschmidt has been responsible for the corporate design of the German government. Florian Adler also teaches communication design as an honorary professor at the HTW Berlin. adlerschmidt has been a member of the IDZ for around 25 years and is also closely connected with the IDZ in other ways. Recently, the office has relaunched the website of the Federal Prize Ecodesign.

1. Could you briefly introduce the adlerschmidt agency to us?
With our 12 colleagues we design identity, information and orientation for organisations, brands and places. We consciously pursue this broad approach, because the ability to orientate plays just as important a role in analog and digital corporate communication as corporate design does in a guidance system. We like to work methodically and with empathy for the users.

2. What was the best experience in your professional life so far? What are you particularly proud of in connection with your company? Based on our cooperation in the DIN committee on the legibility of typefaces, a two-year research and development project together with the German Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired resulted in an online guide to inclusive communication design: www.leserlich.info. With the resulting redesign of the DBSV's website and member magazine, we wanted to prove that barrier-free design can also be attractive for "normal-sighted" people. We were able to learn an enormous amount from the intensive exchange with people who, due to their visual impairment - and not infrequently also from us designers - have a handicapped view of our visually determined communication. For us, sustainable design has always included the question of inclusion.

3.What made you decide to become a member of the IDZ and to stay until today?
Even as a student I was impressed by the serious debate in the IDZ about what design is and should be. The cross-design orientation and the hinge to business and politics broadened my horizons. Added to this is the focus on user-oriented and sustainable design. UX Design Awards and the Federal Ecodesign Award are outstanding examples of this within our questionable design award industry. And last but not least you meet nice people in the IDZ.

4. What inspires you at the moment?
Friedrich von Borries inspires and stimulates with his highly topical political design theory "Weltentwerfen", where he makes a clear distinction between designing and subjugating design. In doing so, he refers, among other things, to Otl Aicher's "die welt als entwurf", which can still be read with profit after 25 years. Also: "Design als Rhetorik", edited by Gesche Joost and Arne Scheuermann, a brilliant volume on the effect of design under the aspect of classical rhetoric and, fittingly, the e-journal "Sprache für die Form" www.designrhetorik.de.