CE Markings - Designers are you sure you know which is which?

Consumers can easily be forgiven for not even realising there are two types of CE markings, yet I have noticed more and more recently that big brand products seem to be displaying the wrong marking which is leading me to suspect designers are either using the wrong symbol on products and it's getting missed during the reviews or more worryingly they are just unaware what the subtle difference in the two icons actually mean.

Consumers also put a lot of faith in the trusted CE mark when looking at purchasing a product and it is a good first step to help rule out that dodgy battery or phone charger for example but all too often I'm sure they are looking at the CE mark and assuming they will be getting a quality tested product when in fact they have again not noticed the subtle difference in the symbol when in fact it means something entirely different.

So what are the different CE markings and what do they both mean?

Side by side the difference is quite obvious, the official CE mark has the 'e' starting as if the 'c' completed to a circle and on the China Export symbol the 'e' starts inside of the circle so the two letters are much closer together.

The official CE marking ("conformité européenne"?French for "European conformity") that everyone knows and trusts is a symbol applied to products to indicate their conformity with the essential requirements of the relevant EU directives regarding both safety and environmental protection.

However this can easily be confused with the similar looking China Export mark. As you can see from the image above the subtle difference is quite easy to spot when they are side by side however on a small label or on the back of a small product it is often quite hard to work out which one is being shown making it difficult even if you were aware to look out for the China Export symbol.

So why is this a concern?

Any product that consumers would expect to be safety critical such as power supplies, phone chargers or any product I guess that could have the potential of either catching fire or causing an eclectic shock should have gone through rigorous and thorough testing, and consumers have grown to lookout for the CE mark as part of their research when purchasing a new product. So when consumers can be so easily mislead this can have very dangerous consequences, with the recent rise in battery operated devices and cheaper replacement phone chargers the risk of them overheating and causing a house fire is very real (something I hear all to often being an on call firefighter).

Final thought for designers

I hope this has helped raise awareness of the two different symbols both as a consumer when looking to purchase a new product but also for designers just to remind you when rushing the final stages of a product to double check the correct symbol has been selected. As it would be a shame to have gone to all the trouble of CE marking a product to then put on the China Export symbol but vice versa this could end up leading to a law suit.