The “Big Picture”
The stable relationship between industry, culture and nature, which was considered something along the lines of a unique selling proposition, provided the basis for the city’s explicit positioning in marketing terms. A background, called “The Big Picture”, was outlined and contains everything that makes the city stand out in the European context:| CULTURE | INDUSTRY | NATURE |
| Linz is real time. | Linz is expansion. | Linz is fresh air. |
| Linz is maneouvring room. | Linz is working day. | Linz is Danube. |
| Linz is Crossing Europe. | Linz is future lab. | Linz is soil contact. |
| Linz is mastery. | Linz is speed. | Linz is greenery. |
| Linz is an interface. | Linz is competition. | Linz is Volksgarten. |
| Linz is determination. | Linz is a profit zone. | Linz is a force field. |
The so-called Big Picture and its different facettes were constantly kept in evidence both in the development of a new pictorial language for the city and in the creation of copy. Linz09 commissioned photographer Paul Kranzler to create a number of unconventional pictorial motifs that would reflect the premises of the “Big Picture”. They depicted scenes of everyday life in the city that even an attentive observer might not notice easily. Kranzler gave us typical sights from a new perspective, the Hauptplatz, the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, the Ars Electronica Center, St Mary’s and the Schlossmuseum with its new South Wing, in focus, out of focus, regardless of whether they were still building sites or had already reached completion. In a similar vein he portrays Linzers in everyday situations, a Steckerlfischbrater, (someone selling spit-fried whiting), chess players, family fun and games at the Pleschingersee, a policewoman on duty. And again and again vistas of the Danube, the city’s many green spaces and the recreation areas close to the city. The capital’s busy industrial plants provided many more motifs.
In press contacts and PR copy, in folders and flyers in the context of corporate communications the focus was on the city’s history, the change Linz had undergone over the past 30 years, the achievements in the areas of industry, technology and trade as well as in the area of culture, and on the city’s high standard of living.
The skillful interlinkage of these new pictorial worlds with descriptions of the city stressing its unique, unmistakable qualities resulted in a sharpening of the city’s profile, which became noticeable in turn in the sudden rise in interest on the part of the international press and of travel journalists from mid-2008 onward.
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