Do you know who invented the copyright symbol? Reinhard Gassner was unable to find this out. Whatever the case; it contains the Roman number 100. Around the ‘C’ there is a circle that you could also call a halo. Along with 30 other German-speaking designers Gassner was invited to design a poster for the Goethe Institut in Santiago de Chile to mark the start of the new millennium.

The visual idea is derived from a remark made by Jan Tschichold; about the theme of the centre axis he said: imagine Jesus without a centre parting. In the representation of saints we encounter the circle as a halo and the emphasis of the centre axis as a sign of uniqueness and credibility. As the model for the design a well-known Russian icon with the sacred face is used.

The intervention in the image is restricted to changing the centre parting and the direction of the gaze and visually addressing the zeros of the year 2000, which were still unfamiliar at the time – packed in the copyright symbol; the new century without a halo.