Brand identities

Here's an English undertaker's shop window, followed by my thoughts on what we might call undertaking corporate style from Over Your Dead Body:

"A persistent whiff of Victoriana often surrounds the appurtenances and procedures of undertaking.

Take the traditional window display. The look is Victorian High Church Gothic with fumed oak, stained glass and polished brass, or the more austere Arts & Crafts look with blonde oak and bright metal fittings. Traditional contents include cinerary urns, flower holders for graves, and photos of horse-drawn hearses. And when this is replaced by dried flower arrangements flanked by corporate slogans and logos, in a cack-handed attempt to make the front office look like an estate agent’s, the changes usually stop at the STAFF ONLY signs.

(The best window display I ever heard of was the Co-op’s in Blackburn. It was a tropical fish tank with lumps of coal sitting on crushed coal on the bottom, with black fish and a purple light at the back.)

Other modernising efforts will also be limited to what meets the public gaze - shiny grey two-piece suits instead of black jackets & waistcoats with grey pinstripe trousers, and a Volvo or Mercedes hearse instead of a Daimler."