From September 27, the Image Counts Too: What the EmpCo Directive Means for Art Direction

From September 27, 2026, the EmpCo directive becomes binding for all companies in Germany, via the amendment to the UWG (Act Against Unfair Competition) already promulgated back in February. There's no transition period – even products already on shelves today, with shelf lives extending past that date, must comply with the new requirements from that day on. General terms like "eco-friendly" or "climate-neutral" will only be permitted from then on if backed by recognized, outstanding environmental performance – such as Germany's Blue Angel label or the EU Ecolabel.

The part most explainers miss

Most explainers on the EmpCo directive focus on copy – which words are still allowed, which aren't. What gets missed is a clause that's more directly relevant to our work than any word list: visual elements like trees, leaves, or green symbols can also count as an environmental claim when paired with text or a logo. That means it's not just a campaign's headline that falls under the new law, but the visual language itself – a rendering toned in green, a lifestyle shoot with a leafy backdrop, an icon system built around leaf motifs, combined with a brand logo or slogan.

What this means for image production

For a studio producing CGI visualizations and campaign photography, this shifts where the actual responsibility sits. Until now, whether an ad's copy made a substantiable environmental claim was primarily a job for copywriting and legal. From September 27, that same question belongs in every art direction brief: does the color palette, the motif, the icon system itself carry a claim that can no longer be defended purely as "that was just a design choice"? A rendering in warm green tones for a kitchen brand is probably fine. The same visual language, paired with a claim about the sustainability of the material, no longer automatically is from that point on.

Where the line actually sits in practice

Important for your own judgment: the law explicitly requires a combination of image and text or logo, not any green motif taken on its own. A nature photograph for an outdoor brand isn't inherently an environmental claim, as long as it isn't tied to a sustainability promise or a corresponding brand positioning. The real test isn't "is the image green," it's "does the image and its context together create the impression of an ecological performance that would need to be provable." That's the same kind of boundary I already described regarding Article 50 and CGI: it isn't the outward appearance alone that decides, it's the context it sits in.

What this means for our own work

The practical consequence is extending the same documentation standard I described for the process boundary around AI images to art direction decisions now too: why was this color palette chosen, what claim is the image actually meant to make in combination with logo and tagline, and could that claim be substantiated if it were ever questioned. That's not bureaucracy for its own sake – it's the same discipline that already applied to ad copy, just now extended to what looks, at first glance, like a purely aesthetic choice.

Conclusion

From September 27, the EmpCo directive demands more than just more careful word choice in advertising. Anyone producing images carries the same responsibility as copy from that date on – because a green motif next to a logo can, under the right circumstances, promise just as much as the word "climate-neutral." Ignoring that means relying on a distinction between image and text the law no longer recognizes.