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ehrens started work with Berlin-based aeg (Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft) in 1906. By the next year he was the factory’s artistic 

consultant. behrens designed all of aeg’s graphic materials (advertisements, exhibit brochures, catalogs, the covers of the firm’s magazine), devised the firm’s new logo, designed factory buildings for it in various cities (the turbine factory in Berlin, 1908–1910, is the

best known) and exposition pavilions. In short, he was the first person in history to create a thoroughgoing corporate graphic style.

In addition, he worked on aeg’s products: lamps, clocks, fans, electric kettles. And behrens did more than sketch their outlines.

He took a hand in the engineering itself, standardizing subassemblies to make them interchangeable. This was true industrial design.

Heater, designed by behrens for aeg, 1920.

Photo courtesy of Quittenbaum

“Industrial design” as a term, of course, did not

yet exist. It first came into regular use, in the United States, toward the end of the decade of 1910–1920 and, as the name of a profession, only in the early 1930s. By the late 1930s, the use of the term had spread to Britain, but it was not until the middle of the century that it reached beyond the English-speaking world.