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Duravit has been making bathrooms worth caring about for nearly 200 years. The craft was never the problem. But the identity had fallen behind what the brand actually deserved: a logo few could decode, a typeface straight out of the 90s, and a corporate blue that had quietly stopped working.

As Creative Director at Meiré und Meiré, I led the redesign with a small but ambitious Duravit team: bring the identity into the present without losing the people who already trust the brand. A fresh take on a category where most competitors play it safe. And where doing it right is a genuine leap forward.

Since 1937, the woodgrouse has carried Duravit's identity into the world. Introduced as a greeting from the Black Forest, where the brand was founded in 1817 and where the bird itself, increasingly rare, still lives. The sentiment was always right. The execution had simply drifted too far into abstraction to do it justice anymore. Most people saw a shape. Few saw a bird.

We brought it back into focus: sleeker, more confident, more readable as what it actually is. And this time, the bird does more than sit on a logo. It anchors a broader narrative. One of home, of regional rootedness, of environmental responsibility and social commitment in the area Duravit has called home for two centuries. A symbol that finally carries the weight it always deserved.

With the woodgrouse back in fighting shape, it earns its place as a standalone mark. Strong enough to anchor a store sign or a campaign visual on its own, as long as the wordmark isn’t far away to close the loop. And the wordmark, significantly refined, is more than ready for that responsibility: on facades, on product, on merch, in every context the old version couldn’t quite hold.

The London retail store puts it all to the test — and makes a convincing case.

DuraSans had served as Duravit's house typeface for years and had done its job. But a brand ready to move forward needed type that could move with it.

We commissioned Yassin Baggar and Anton Koovit of Fatype to develop DuraNext — a bespoke type family that builds on what came before while leaving plenty of room for what comes next.

Some of the quirky details that gave DuraSans its character are still there, just recalibrated. Subtle enough to let the typeface breathe across interfaces and longer-form content, present enough to keep things interesting. The pointed edges of the redesigned logo find their way into the letterforms too, threading a quiet visual logic through the whole system.

The digital applications put every decision to the test. The blue demands attention in a category that rarely earns it — and holds up. DuraNext, deliberately cleaner than its predecessor, steps back where it needs to: creating space for product, story, and experience to take centre stage. The mark of a design brand that’s serious about being taken seriously.

Anyone can make a logo look good on a screen. Brochures and corporate presentations are the longer test — sustained attention, complex content, real environments. This is where the system shows what it’s actually made of.