AT&T, now owned by SBC, has released their newly “refreshed” logo. So, what do you think?
I’m particularly interested in the opinions of non-designers. For that reason, I’m going to reserve my own comments until later. I’d like to hear some genuine thoughts on whether you like it, does it represent the attributes of “innovation, integrity, quality, reliability and unsurpassed customer care”, is it better than the old one?
Gah, no! Wow. The font is jovial, playful … the ball looks like a bouncy ball rather than the fairly serious (or Death Starrish — take your pick) AT&T logo that we all came to know and love. Prior to the Death Star, they had the Wehrmacht Helmet, and the abstracted bell, and the original bell. This new logo is disconnected from anything: heritage, current business, Blue Chip status … if I didn’t know this was AT&T, I would get entirely the wrong impression of what the company does or where it’s come from.
The only point I can make in its favor is that, being as jovial as it is, it is perhaps less intimidating to customers than the Death Star was.
um, i like it. i think it’s “neat”, and i’m responding from a purely aesthetic sensibility – not thinking about any of the actual trappings of the company, etc. i definetly like the see-thru-ness of the 2-color logo’s globe, and i’ve always personally been a fan of lower case letters…
so this is my opinion strictly as a designer who likes pretty things, not as me intellectually analyzing it from a business sense.
I like the see-through aspect of the ball that you get without the background. I don’t really like the font. It seems kind of childish or playful, rather than thick and bold like the original logo. And it kind of strikes me as “cheap” (though maybe I’m staring at it too much and thinking about it too much). It doesn’t strike me as a font that can stand the test of time. The bold, thick letters could still be applicable in 100 years. But this font kind of seems too stylish to still work a long time from now. I also feel like I could physically “break” the font if I could get my hands on the letters.
I’m also not sure what the point of the redesign is. A lot of times companies will end up combining aspects of the 2 logos for the new identity, but I don’t see any type of combination here — just an “update” to AT&T’s logo. “Hey everybody. We’re new!” But they have to stick with this logo for a long time to come. A bunch of press releases with a new marketing campaign could have accomplished the same thing.
I HATE the old ball. I like the new ball better than the old, but I don’t quite understand whether there’s a system behind the changing widths of the stripes, which kind of confuses me. I like the one-color version better than the multi-color version, because I find the weird ripple in the background of the multi-color version distracting. I don’t like the new text. I think it’s outdated and unbalanced. And whereas the ball still retains the character of the old logo and seems still to represent the same brand, the font does not.
As for message content, I definitely get updated-ness and the large worldliness from the new ball and perhaps increased friendliness, but I don’t get any customer-friendliness from the new font. And lowercase certainly doesn’t say “reliability” to me.
I like that I’m looking down on the new ball, as opposed to the old one, which I was looking at from the side. It’s … it’s like I’m BIGGER than the new ball.
I definitely like the perspective shift and the new 3D effect (the old 3D effect was just slapped onto a 2D logo… not so good). I’m not sure about the subtle rings inside the blue… they’re kind of wigging me out (maybe I should stop drinking). The whole lowercase thing strikes me as nothing but blatant trend following.
I like the new font, but it does seem like nothing new. I HATE the new logo. I don’t like the 3d effect. I seem to usually hate lame graphic attempts to create a feeling like shadow or depth, but without really doing either. I much prefer the 1 color logo (no stripes inside, no fake shadowing, whew).
I never liked the old logo that much. I kind of like the 3-D look though, but I prefer the blue one color version. The other version with the primarily white sphere on a white background, looks kind of odd. I think it would have been better if they hadn’t inverted the colors like they did. Using the same color for the foreground and background doesn’t seem to ever work well.
Sadly, I think this type will be outdated in five years. It’s too light and unstable. I know they’re trying for a soft-cuddly-approachable company – but it doesn’t really jive with who they are.