Redesigning a Legend
Audi’s Global Brand Evolution
When Philipp Brune, Managing Director at Strichpunkt Design, invited me to join his team as a freelance Senior Art Director, I immediately accepted. Over the course of nine months, I contributed to Audi’s global brand rebranding — a comprehensive redesign spanning digital products, user interfaces, and print communication.
The project followed a digital-first approach, using the user interface as the core expression of the brand. Digital systems defined principles, behavior, and visual language — which were then consistently translated into print and other analog touchpoints.
This was not about updating visuals. It was about redefining how Audi’s brand works across media, platforms, and contexts — precise, reduced, and unmistakably Audi.
THE AIM
One Brand. One System. Across All Touchpoints.
To create a consistent and connected brand experience across all platforms and formats — from wearables, mobile applications, and in-car interfaces to print communication and physical media.
The interface became the starting point: behavior, motion, typography, spacing, and hierarchy were defined digitally and scaled across the entire brand ecosystem.
A Living Brand & Design System
To develop a living design system that goes far beyond a traditional style guide.
The system provides Audi teams worldwide with clear principles, tools, and guidance to create brand-consistent digital and print communication — scalable, flexible, and future-proof.
It enables teams to design interfaces, products, and content with confidence while maintaining a strong and coherent brand identity.
MY TASKS
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Defining brand, design, and interaction principles (digital-first)
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Concept and design of modular UI systems and components
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Creation of responsive interface layouts and templates
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Development of iconography and visual assets
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Design of brand and design-system documentation
Agency: Strichpunkt Design
Client: Audi AG
My Role: Freelance Senior Art Director / UX & UI
Results & Recognition
The rebranding received international recognition and multiple prestigious awards:
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Red Dot Award – Best of the Best
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Art Directors Club – 2× Silver Nail
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German Digital Award – Bronze
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Corporate Design Award
Part 1
THE REBRANDING OF AUDI
Reducing the rules of branding to a minimum. Developing a dynamic, open system to allow creative variety to unfold. Base it on the same foundation of versatility, honesty and balance.
Core Components
The Audi identity was simplified and optimized for digital use. Core elements were reworked as flexible system components: the logo was flattened for clarity across all screen sizes and freed from rigid placement rules, the color palette reduced to improve accessibility and ease of application, and hierarchy and custom typography refined to enable clearer, more consistent communication across interfaces.
Global Icon Set
The icon system was designed to scale across markets, screen sizes and contexts while maintaining Audi’s precise, technical brand language. The icon system is pixel-perfect and fully responsive: icons scale gracefully, revealing more detail at larger sizes while remaining clear and minimal at small sizes. Divided into content and action icons, the latter are enclosed in a ring, echoing the Audi logo. The icons are applied consistently across car screens, wearables, apps, out-of-home, and print, combining timelessness with elegant simplicity.
Prototypes for HMi Screens
Navigation Concept
The challenge was to create a navigation system that scales across platforms and markets while staying intuitive, calm and unmistakably Audi. A unified navigation system was developed to handle countless UI elements—bars, tabs, button, pager, stepper, loader and more—across multiple states (error, overflow, default, hidden, locked, etc.) and on different devices (HMI screens, watches, phones, desktop, …). It was built before “pattern libraries” even existed, yet it worked seamlessly on all screens and remained intuitive for both users and designers.
Mockups, Prototypes & User Testing
The mockups demonstrate how the design system translates into real interfaces — ensuring consistency, speed and clarity across Audi’s digital ecosystem. The UI was designed with real content from the start—not in isolation. Concepts were prototyped (HMI Screens, Watch, Phone, Desktop, …), tested, and refined through user feedback, ensuring functionality and clarity before final implementation.
Part 2
DIGITAL BRANDING PLATFORM
The branding platform translates Audi’s core values into a flexible, digital-first system — built to guide interfaces, not constrain them. I created a digital branding platform that allowed designers, agencies, and Audi B2B clients to access all design elements in one place. Beyond visual assets, the platform provided the code behind each component, ensuring UI quality and eliminating redundant work—saving time and cost. At the time, this approach was revolutionary, transparent, and highly efficient.
CREDITS
Philipp Brune:
“Christoph worked with the Audi team for over ni months on a very extensive and complex digital branding project. We quickly came to appreciate his openness and ability to give and receive constructive feedback. His high standards and strong identification with the project fit perfectly into the overall team dynamic. We would gladly work with him again!”
Nico Wüst:
“Christoph was an integral part of the team, actively supporting us in developing design and interaction principles, creating an icon language, and designing a website. His calm, friendly, and open manner, combined with high reliability and creative results, truly impressed us. I look forward to the next opportunity to work with Christoph.”
Strichpunkt Design
Client
Audi
Christoph Beringer
Patric Sterrantino
Creative Director
Nico Wüst
Björn Dieckmann
Franziska Schkade
Kim Reit
Sammy Bohneberg
Volker Kirschner-Kross
Senior Art Director
Christoph Gey
Fabian Hammans
Kevin Mitchell
Richard Bruskowski
Veit Kiel
