I can’t say I’m in love with Swisscom’s new logo by itself, but I will say that the overall rebrand feels right as a whole. The type treatment is solid and the logo — although downright ugly standing still — lends itself well to motion and reinterpretation on packaging. The rebrand was headed up by Moving Brands (apparently with help from Dalton Maag).
I’m not trying to diminish what Moving Brands has done — they know way more than I’ll ever know about brands and how people perceive them, and hell, for all I know this is the best logo ever made and it’s singlehandedly going to increase Swisscom’s annual revenue by 1600% — but seeing a room full of designers standing around an idea board like that and thinking about the hours and weeks and months and millions of dollars that go into a project like this… Well, I sometimes wonder why these big corporations don’t just surf Behance for like and hour or something, find the kid with the best logos, throw him like $50K (which will completely blow his mind and make him your slave basically) and give him like 6 months. I bet he comes up with something just about as good and you saved like $20 million or whatever the hell they pay huge agencies these days. Ok, that’s probably all a bit of a stretch, but it does cross my mind, and if I become CEO of a european telecom giant you better believe I’m at least going to look into the idea. Actually, Moving Brands should have just done the same thing and pocketed the difference, all those guys would be doing burnouts in Ferraris wearing whale skin jackets now instead of standing around a chalkboard.
All that aside, what’s amazing to me is that these companies had the presence of mind and resources to film the process. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for the poor designers over at Moving Brands having some guy with a camera always looking over their shoulder, sounds like a nightmare to me. Of course, a lot of this could have been compiled after the fact, but it’s still an interesting look inside the process of high level design shops. I’ve always wanted to do something similar for one of my posters — capture it from start to finish — but I’m convinced that the second I started the camera I would make the worst thing ever and as hard I tried I would never actually catch anything good happening. Maybe that would be more fun, the time-lapse frustrated designer movie. Video Link
More details and pictures over at Brand New
Via LogoDesignLove
Hmmm, I don’t get it (either?). It looks like something pulled out of a surrealist painting. How does this look when very small?? Or even in one colour/tone?
Because it’s the same branch of the industry, I was reminded of Telenor logo first (http://www.telenor.com/). But the Norwegians got it much better, I think. I know it’s very different, but these blue folds and the overall abstractness reminded me of it.
To me it looks like something going out of fashion VERY soon.
I’m not a huge fan of it either, but it is very interesting to catch a glimpse into their process. Thanks for posting. I probably wouldn’t have caught that.
That’s the way it works. The logo in a big corporation doesn’t have to be nice. It should fit the overall idea for the brand. It should be recognizable in colors and style. It it, everything has been matched with precision, and it should say in customers mids. I think.
The small companies on the other hand, should have great logo, cause it actually might bring them new clients.
Overkill when trying to come up with branding usually drives me crazy. I’ve spent too many hours in meetings that end up in shouting matches just to end up with a simple, somewhat boring logo… It all just doesn’t seem worth it!
But overall, I don’t really mind this branding… Seeing the amount of research and ideas they went through in the first few seconds seemed a little ridiculous, though.
i dont know, i kind of like it. it especially makes more sense seeing it in motion.
I don’t like it at all, moving or still. It’s a piece of corporate crap.
And the music they chose for the video is awful as well.
FAIL.
it looks to clunky and goofy the way it is. I like the blue parts though, but the red shapes just throw me off.
Hah, whale skin jackets!
It is a little silly to think that a sea shell represents a swiss phone company. And the though of having a stack of 100 different post cards and a 3d model as being necessary is silly as well. AT&T still has one of the better phone logos – communication = globe, totally get it. Communication = seashell + swiss flag, not really.
My Friday and weekend just got infinitely better after reading ” doing burnouts in Ferraris wearing whale skin jackets”.
We’re toying with doing this type of capture of some of our projects at IdentityMine and I think getting the designers on board with the end video is a way to mitigate them “hating” the camera being around. Your also right that just collecting the artifacts and putting the story together after the process can be less intrusive.
Kurt
Seems like the video is a good way to justify the logo. If they didn’t make their process so apparent, it would be easy to assume a logo like that was created on a whim after 3 shots of Jack. This way they can say, “see look! we actually did spend a long time on this!”
If I had created that logo, I would be terrified to send it back to the client by itself. But with a fancy video! Then I’d feel safe.
Alex-
definitely…. If there’s one thing my time as a freelance designer taught me it’s that clients love a good story attached to passable design. The better you explain the reasoning behind the design, the more they will love it. Even if you thought it up after the fact, as long as it sort of makes sense.
Absolutely. I call it the “reverse engineered concept”. Saves the day many a time haha
Void for vagueness.
Oops. Comment 13 is mine.
As Swiss I can tell you what happened here when this logo came out: drama. No one was really convinced of it. No one really liked it.
Swisscom said they needed a rebrand ’cause they were merging all their sub-brands (mobile, internet, fixnet) into a single one and somehow that logo is supposed to say that.
To be honest I really liked the old logo, but it’s true that they couldn’t keep it while renewing themselves.
After.. mh, more than a year I guess, no one complains about it anymore and it looks good pretty much everywhere, we learned to like it (and it’s not happening the same with RSI – swiss italian television- rebranding, believe me).
Thanks for sharing the video 🙂
Wow, I’m really surprised you don’t like the logo Scott. Apart from the lame obligatory gradients I think it’s pretty interesting. In fact I’ll go out on a limb and say that if the gradients weren’t there and it was just a flat 2 color logo and if it were designed 40 years ago and printed on some posters with a blond swiss woman holding a dieter rams phone on some alpine ski slope, you would be all over it! 😛
say like this…
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h316/weirdling_2006/swisscom-poster.jpg
I like Franks version way better! 🙂
Great post – I always wonder about those vast budgets that apparently must go into mostly unbeneficial boardroom meetings. Seeing the end result and knowing that many skilled designers could have done equally (if not much better)….for fraction of cost.
Right time to hook up the live feeed office cam!
I like it.
It may be corporate, but what’s wrong with corporate? It does register as a solid rebranding. It’s abstract, but the rebrand is cohesive and fitting for the company and market. It feels intuitive and dynamic.
Nice one, Frank! 😉
very interesting indeed. one butt ugly logo that looks hot when used in the right way.
I’m in love with the type adjustment of the i in swisscom
This is over one year old news…? 🙂
Looks like you haven’t got a clue on how design processes with large clients work. You sometimes read some large figure in the news, but usually most of the budget is used for implementation.And if i.e. Swisscom looked up some random Behance-talent the would miss great branding competence. You will always need extremely strong arguments for selling a new profile to the CEO/board, not just some nice and glossy graphics.
Funny shot, though, of all the contemplation people.
Wow that video rocks. Love the syncronised everything…