ALLTEL:

New:  logo

Launched:  April 22, 2005

Story in brief:
It's a regional telephone company with a land-lines heritage, operations in some 27 U.S. states, and hungry new competitors. But its image couldn't have been worse...  old, cold and insensitive... and research showed the 1983 logo was part of that. CEO Scott Ford (who had taken over from his founding father) was determined to change the culture itself as well as the image... to be the newest, freshest and friendliest telcom provider. Steve Burnett, for twenty years an Alltel design resource and for six years the annual report designer, took on the logo assignment and with Ford's help solved it in three weeks.  At launch, Ford could say with conviction "Today we are introducing a new logo that better positions our company to compete amid the dramatic changes that are taking place in our industry. "

Credits:
C.E.O. - Scott Ford
Marketing - Frank O'Mara
Identity design - Steve Burnett, Burnett Group (NY)

First Impressions:
With its tortured letterforms, the old "Alltel" was high on my personal list of sleeping beauties, overdue for a designer's kiss. The new mark is certainly fresher, simpler and more direct.  And it's an improvement in legibility, despite the negative/positive fragmentation of the name (a risky tactic).

It's fun to look at precedents in pos/neg type treatments, like L&M's great Eaton (Gene Grossman directing?). Note that in Crafton, Bruce Blackburn flipped the order of overlay, to front-over-back.  And then there's the brilliantly simple McKesson (Grossman again).

In all these precedents, the negative letterforms are contained within the name, so the name retains its integrity as a word.  Alltel risks perception of "lltel" but this was a risk knowingly accepted. "We knew people might have to work a little harder to see the 'a,' " says Burnett "but once they see it they have learned it for good. It makes the brand a little more interesting."

Other Comments:
From Onoma, Roger van den Bergh submits two recent designs, Hermes (1994, a BeNeLux mass transit agency) and USAR (1996, a subsidiary of Semtech Corporation... semiconductors). Yes, first-letter reversals can be made to work. (Note Roger's tight H-e and U-S kerning.)

From Amsterdam,  Krijn Verhoek sends to us the Etos mark, designed in 2001 by VBAT for a chain of 430 health and beauty shops.

And Nick Manhart sends us O Deck, from the observation deck at Seattle's Space Needle.

Finally, how can we resist this Rand pun, by Joseph Szala for SpeakUp?