Intelsat

New:  Wordmark, visual system, and themeline

Launched:  July 3, 2006

Story in brief:
This is a case of fine tuning, initiated by a Chief Brand Officer, Andrea Fabbri (actual title, Sr. Mgr., Brand Strategy and Marketing Communications)...  fine tuning for  communication, image, and functional reasons. As  communication, the change event helped signal the significance of Intelsat's July 3 acquisition of its leading competitor, PanAmSat, to create earth's new leader in fixed satellite service. In imagery, the all-caps sans-serif wordmark is meant to feel both more important and more contemporary. And functionally, its all-caps linearity and softer gray color helps secure the visual lock-up of wordmark to symbol, strengthening the logo's branding utility as a unit. The gray also contributes a base color to an expanded visual system and palette.

In directing Siegel+Gale, Fabbri ruled out change of the "brilliant" 2001 symbol (by Addison). As well as designing, S+G's Justin Peters wrote both the evocative brand theme "Closer, by far" and a campaign theme... "0 degrees of separation." (Why? All Intelsat satellites are parked over the equator... 0 degrees latitude.)

Credits:
C.E.O. - David McGlade
C.B.O. - Andrea Fabbri
Identity counsel, design and tag lines - Siegel+Gale;
Justin Peters, Creative Director

First Impressions:
Mission accomplished; it's a well-executed, strategically timed refreshment of the Intelsat brand... a good way to celebrate (and secure) a merger.
 

                               A poster from the 'soft' internal launch, focused on merger not brand.

Other Comments:
With raised eyebrows, several readers have forwarded the new logo designed for iShare's, Barclay's brand of exchange-traded funds.  I don't like to play "gotcha." But here, both in the "i" idea and execution and, remarkably, in color selection, this does indeed look like an instance of logo plagiarism, evidently by iShares. (The categories are so different, however, that it's legal.)