Shell - When an Energy Brand Learned to Speak Visually

This Sunday Special explores how Shell used graphic design, architecture, and communication to make an invisible product - energy - legible, reassuring, and everyday. From early poster designers such as Edward McKnight Kauffer and Hans Schleger, to later brand-system thinking associated with figures like Michael Wolff, Shell treated design not as decoration, but as infrastructure.

The episode looks at how service stations became recognisable places of safety and pause, how visual consistency worked as wayfinding at speed, and how Shell bridged the gap between extreme performance and everyday driving through motorsport - most famously with Ferrari and the claim “Shell V-Power. Ferrari fuel for the road.”

This is not an episode about fuel. It is about how design builds trust at scale and how one brand helped movement feel safe, readable, and normal.