Feb 03 2006
Teddy Death Star
So here’s the original Ma Bell logo. It’s pleasant and friendly, right? No harsh angles, a cute school-bell icon in the middle. “Ma Bell will take care of you,” it said. “We’re your friends.” Sure, AT&T & Bell System were a giant monopoly, but the the network worked well and everything was cheaper before the DOJ decided to butt in and screw up the whole thing. Not a big surprise, really.
But this is about the logos.
Bell System was broken into numerous Baby Bells. AT&T spent giant piles of cash developing a new identity and logo. And they came up with the logo to the right.
Unfortunately, it looked eerily like this:
In the years since then, of course, AT&T has done its best to act like that second option is the one it’s really going for. Now there’s been yet another telco merger (SBC acquired AT&T) and it seems they’ve decided to use the AT&T identity for the “new” company. It was time to soften AT&T’s image a bit, so they softened the logo. The Death Star look is gone. The new logo has a some depth to it. The massive, blocky AT&T has been softened to a friendly lowercase “at&t.” Sure it looks kinda like Continental Airlines’ logo, but who’s going to notice?
I guess I just found the logo redesign funny when I saw it for the first time today. It was at the top of a letter informing me that my SMALL BIZ plan agreement would be lapsing on March 20th and that they were going to go ahead and renew my contract if they didn’t hear from me. For about $130 a month I get two phone lines and voicemail. They want to lock me in for another full year. To me, that’s not friendly. Maybe I’d have felt better if AT&T’s agency had come up with something even friendlier, like my little buddy here.
Though honestly, it would probably be more accurate if they went with a slightly modified version.