It is one of the most recognised symbols in the classical-record industry: German graphic designer Hans Domizlaff's crown of stylised tulips that constitutes the colophon (or logo, as we would now say) of Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Domizlaff sketched out the colophon in pencil on tracing paper in 1949.

By this time, DG was an already venerable recording company (it was founded in 1898), and remaking itself in the international market after the devastation of the war years. By 1949, the label was actually three separate concerns, each of them colour-coded: red for Polydor, with its brighter, more popular repertoire; silver for Archiv, with its more scholarly, mainly Baroque repertoire; and, of course, yellow for Deutsche Grammophon, with its rapidly burgeoning classical repertoire.