Today Xerox unveiled a transformation of its corporate identity "designed to reflect today's Xerox, a customer-centric company built on a continuing history of innovative ideas, products and services that meet the needs of businesses small to large."
The Xerox logo is now a "lowercase treatment of the Xerox name - in a vibrant red - alongside a sphere-shaped symbol sketched with lines that link to form an illustrative "X," representing Xerox's connections to its customers, partners, industry and innovation, and designed to be more effectively animated for use in multi-media platforms".
WhatTheyThink.com Senior Editor Cary Sherburne commented on the new identity, saying:
The new Xerox brand is a dramatic departure from previous brand images. One objective the company had in designing the brand, according to Vice President of Brand Marketing and Advertising Richard Wergan, was to maintain the power of the Xerox word mark, while delivering a more approachable and human feel to the company. The word mark and symbol will be used jointly, never separately. The word mark (xerox) was created with a hand-drawn font, and Wergan characterizes the symbol as an "abstract symbol that talks to the connections we make with our customers, partners, the environment and innovation on a daily basis." The company wanted an identity that could be animated and could speak through animation to what the company stands for. A modern color palette and a custom font also accompany the new brand.
With drupa around the corner, Xerox plans to use this global event as a launching pad to show more than a visual identity. Wergan says, "drupa provides an opportunity to provide a brand experience for our customers that is more than the adopton of a new logo and new imagery. It will be reflected in everything, from the way we communcate with customers and prospects to how we encourage them to see us on the show floor. We will be using technology, content management solutions and new media to effectively communicate in advance what they can expect to see on the show floor, including animated fly-throughs of the stand, and to deliver an experience during the show that lives up to those expectations."
The new brand will be rolled out globally over the next 18 months, with everything from the Web site, which was live last night, to new business cards, a new look for brochures, and trade dress for equipment. It will be interesting to watch this unfold and to see how Xerox leverages this new look and feel.
Update: The Brand New blog, a blog dedicated to corporate and brand identity provides good commentary on the new Xerox identity.
Discussion
By Mike on Jan 07, 2008
Bocce anyone?
By Business Cards Guru on Jan 07, 2008
I like their new logo... simple but looks very professional
By Hideki on Jan 07, 2008
new logo reminds me its Kodak's....
By Brian Regan on Jan 07, 2008
3D is very important, from web 2.0 to virtual Worlds..... I want to see if I can get the ball from their Second Life location and toss it around, that would be very cool.
By Brian Regan on Jan 08, 2008
Ok correction... its not a ball, its a sphere
By Greg on Jan 08, 2008
A new identity for a new year is timely and probably in order for a company that from a customer perspective is very slow to change. I am more interested in the efficiency it which this change can happen. How many pieces of collateral will be Discarded and what systems are in place to make this global change to their brand? Do they practice what they preach and had a digital collateral solution in place that can update their entire marketing collateral line? Is this digital collateral solution tied to a distributed print network of Xerox providers for on-demand production? This would be the real story behind their re-branding process not the press release text that their logo represents "connections we make with our customers, partners, the environment and innovation".
By Bryan Yeager on Jan 08, 2008
We were just discussing this earlier today in one of my classes. I really think they're going to get some flack for this, as evidenced by the post on the linked Brand New blog. The typeface really is reminiscent of Kodak's new identity typeface, as well as the red. Probably not the best of choices, considering how both their industries and locations are strikingly similar. As far as I'm concerned, the only people who get anything out of the "deeper meaning" of the Xerosphere are the people who created it, and to some small extent, the company itself. Also, I think the glossy "Web 2.0" look adopted by so many websites and some companies will fall out of style in the next 3 years, leaving Xerox stuck with an eventual clichéd look. To me, this isn't a lasting brand identity.
By Jim Olsen on Jan 09, 2008
It seems that someone has already committed a sin re the new brand color. Take a look at the "Xerox Exchange" email sent out yesterday. It sure ain't red.
As I've traveld through numerous airports and perused many magazines, I have always been warmly drawn to the simplicity of the corporate branding and the design of their print ads, web ads, and airport posters. I'm not a designer so what I do I know? What I do know is that I am actually sad to see the old brand go - it appears that I had an emotional attachment to it.
Now I do have a suggestion. I am a diehard Notre Dame football fan. Since we are going to come back with a roar in 2008, perhaps Xerox can morph into blue and gold - I'd go for that!
By Henk Gianotten on Jan 09, 2008
Take a very nice font (FS Albert). Modify the characters lower case x and lower case r. The quality of these new characters is (in my opinion) shocking. Create the word xerox. Add a red ball, add some stripes and voila! A new logo. New world, new connections, new attitudes, new chances, new opportunities, new logo! The old upper case logo XEROX is very strong. Business Week had a great XEROX ad this week. Strong headline, strong text, strong logo. I doubt that the new xerox (in lower case only) will impress all existing XEROX users.
By Patrick Henry on Jan 10, 2008
In The Brand Gap, a thought-provoking book in which author Marty Neumeier presents what he calls “the first unified theory of branding,” we’re reminded that a brand isn’t a logo, a trademark, a corporate identity system, or a product. “A brand,” he writes, “is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company...Each person creates his or her own version of it...When enough individuals arrive at the same gut feeling, a company can be said to have a brand.” Neumeier believes that the most powerful brands are “charismatic”: the ones that distinguish products, services, or companies for which people believe there are no substitutes. “Any brand, backed by enough courage and imagination, can become a charismatic brand,” he claims. The fact that so few do stems from what Neumeier sees as a too-common disconnect in the branding process. According to Neumeier, “Strategy and creativity, in most companies, are separated by a mile-wide chasm.” Strategy proceeds from the corporate brain’s analytical, linear left half; creativity springs from the intuitive, emotional right. “Unfortunately, the left brain doesn’t always know what the right brain is doing. Whenever there’s a rift between strategy and creativity—between logic and magic—there’s a brand gap.” No vendor of graphic communications technology is more impressively left-brained than Xerox. The carefully modulated statements in its announcement of a retooled brand identity betoken a strategy that was planned and is being executed with ultra-logical attention to detail. But, can a company as cerebral and methodical as Xerox do the right-brain thing as well? Can it infuse its new brand with the kind of emotional appeal behind the charisma that Neumeier celebrates? As it rolls out the new emblems over the next 18 months, what kinds of magic will Xerox use to make our guts say, “Yes!” before our heads do? These questions overshadow the debate about what the sphere conveys, whether lowercasing the brand name is a good idea, and even whether the logotype looks too much like Kodak’s. Still, the responses to this post have been pretty spirited—one might almost say, emotional. So perhaps Xerox is on the right track after all.
By Nick on Jan 11, 2008
this logo is horrible and is a printing disaster waiting to happen!...granted the font is okay but did the world of design lose hope in serifed fonts...NO MAS! apparently...sad, sad story, as is the case of this logo "2.0 style"
By Ashley Walker on Jan 14, 2008
In a non-professional capacity (as in, I don't speak on behalf of anyone but myself), I think the new identity is a) unattractive and b) a bad decision. If Xerox is having problems with making money, it's not because of their logo. The old identity was much more easily identifiable and memorable (in my opinion). I also agree with the comment about the old uppercase XEROX being much stronger. Now I have to look twice to see what brand it is - it looks like a lot of other logos out in the marketplace in terms of typeface style. It will be interesting to see if they change back over time.
By Jim York on Jan 16, 2008
Bad color choice. Changing logo was a risk but changing the color at the same time is poor judgement. Xerox is a staple in electronic printing. Only a non printer thought of Xerox as a copier company. They should have remained blue.
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