OK, Xerox got a new logo. That’s right.
Why?
Here’s the new logo theory of businessweek :
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Making the Brand More Approachable**
Designed in the 1960s by branding firm, Chermayeff & Geismar, the familiar block-capital-letter XEROX wordmark, most often seen around the world in red, did not lend itself to the three-dimensional world of Internet and mobile-phone marketing canvases. The new logo, created in FS Albert font, is accompanied by a symbol—a red sphere that is trying
to convey a sense of the globe. The intersecting graphic ribbons encircling the sphere signify the worldwide connections between Xerox’s customers, employees, and other stakeholders. The new wordmark, with softened and rounded lower-case letters, is a far cry from the former imposing logo hatched in an era when U.S. Steel and IBM (IBM) were kings of the corporate mountains.
The new graphic identity of the company is meant to make Xerox a more approachable brand without compromising its reputation for engineering. In fact, an internal document circulated between Interbrand and Xerox describes the new graphic font this way: “I am FS Albert. I am a modern and approachable font. My rounded corners make me more human and less technical.” The sphere symbol will be especially used on the Internet and will spin in other animated applications, says Maryanne Stump, Interbrand’s senior director of brand strategy.
“The old Xerox logo and graphics just didn’t lend themselves to the new media landscape.” But does it make much difference? Dennis Keene, an independent marketing consultant, says done properly, a new brand architecture can be a great start to galvanizing employees around a new brand idea, and from there it travels to customers. “You have to do all the other things right too, but a brand’s graphics are the connective tissue of a brand strategy and reache consumer brains in ways they aren’t even aware of…it’s the difference between getting the wiring of the brand right or wrong,” says Keene.
… and here’s what I have to say:
Looking at the picture you will notice how the things have worked. First it’s the black color. Then it’s the red one. It’s working but not good enough – there was this crisis and all the debts before a couple of years. Now Xerox is back. The company got its huge profit for the last year and they want to flag this change. What’s better than a new logo in the year of the new beginning ( considering the asian calendar) ?
OK, lets see what are the perspectives:
Xbox got this green color, Konika got the blue one. We will bet again on RED.
IF you look the top 100 brands, you will notice that there are quite a few that are using a “X”, a cross symbol or something similar ( 13 – BMW, 54 – VW, 58 – Chanel ). So this is it – we will add a big X on a planet, cause we are global and we want to remix KONIKA and CANON ( oh, yes – and our name start with X.. ) . Konika got the planet, canon got the clear wordmark. What about this new type? We can’t have a new logo without a new typeface! Yes, it will be something not so edgy.
and a lot more BLA-BLA. We all can speculate and tell jokes.
The truth is that there are not so many options. I think this is the result because of the elimination system – check what variations of red are using the competitors, check also what are the shapes.. combine this with all the web 2.0 logos that surround us. The kids will think that XEROX are making morally old products if the new logo is not 2.0 styled. If they don’t make it like this right now, then when? And of course the flagman is the X. This way they got two chess figures – a wordmark and a symbol. Clever move. It’s not just a logo redesign, it’s an expansion. A needed one.
I like the typeface. Really – it’s cute. But I don’t like that the notice is 2D and the element is 3D.
This is what makes this logo looks cheap. As it’s done by some amateur. But we all know it’s not.
Well, I guess the clients wanted it that way…. by some unknown reason.
All I’m saying is that the planet could be better.
PS: how can you design a new 2.0 website without 2.0 logo ? The second is essential for the first one. The images below are from the new redesigned website. It’s not a bad one, by the way.
PPS: Xerox got 56-th in the 2007 Brand Value Position , let’s see how will it work with the new logo.
You can also check the xerox discussion in UnderConsideration.
Furthermore, if you’re curious about where Xerox actually got its company name in the first place, check this naming article on the topic.
