For Peter Schmidt Group, one of Europe’s renowned design agencies, the elephant has been central to the agency brand, representing its ethos: ‘Empathy for the brands of the future.’

In 2024, the agency repositioned itself. The new appearance, driven by the idea of ‘amplified imagination,’ honours Peter Schmidt Group’s origins and fascination with emerging technologies while still keeping human creativity at the forefront.

As part of its current brand relaunch, Peter Schmidt Group is expanding its brand identity to include an auditory component, and is the first German design agency to do so. The new agency positioning “Amplified Imagination” is reflected in strong proprietary brand elements.

With sonic branding based on low-frequency elephant sounds – so-called “rumbles” – Peter Schmidt Group’s new sound identity makes reference to the elephant, and pays homage to the agency’s most iconic brand asset. The elephant is not only the visual logo of the Peter Schmidt Group, it also represents the agency’s design ethos: “empathy for the brands of the future.”

Elephants communicate with low-frequency sounds, which can travel up to 7 kilometers and are partly below the human hearing range at frequencies under 20 Hz. Dr. Angela Stöger-Horwath, biologist and elephant researcher from the University of Vienna, provided TRO with recordings of elephant rumbles that she recorded during a research expedition at Addo National Park. These recordings served as the source material for composing the sound assets for Peter Schmidt Group.

“Low frequencies are familiar to anyone who has ever stood in a club next to a subwoofer. You feel the bass, low frequencies, vibrating in your body,” says TRO’s Creative Director, Inken Bornholdt. “Elephants communicate with each other in a similar way, using deep frequency sounds to connect with each other.”

Dr. Angela Stöger-Horwath, biologist and founder of the Mammal Communication Lab at the University of Vienna, confirms these insights about elephant communication and describes the low-frequency rumbles as the “secret language of elephants”.