INTL. REVIEW BY Dado Queiroz POSTED BY Brand New

Flat goes the NET

Brazilian NET is the biggest cable based multi services company in Latin America, providing cable TV service to more than 3 million customers and broadband internet to more than 2.5 million. Controlled by media giant Globo (the 3rd biggest privately owned broadcaster in the world, after CBS and NBC and whose logo was previously reviewed on Brand New), NET began as a cable TV provider in 1991, to later offer also internet access and VoIP services. Recently, a new NET logo was released, with almost no noise about it — perhaps a symptom of the overall neglect that logo design is still treated with in Brazil.

In an attempt to make the logo more contemporary, the internal team that took the job seems to have gone for the general “contemporize” formula: they maintained the overall concept of the logo, lost the arched effect and gradient (sticking with the lighter colour), set the three-striped “E” proportion to the 16:9 widescreen standard (like MTV), gave the “N” and “T” some round corners and set the whole thing in a slightly lighter stroke.

The former logo had something of a “curvature of the world” shape, probably reminiscent of the “we are so very much global indeed” era of logos (and also of its owner’s name, Globo). In the new one, the rectangle shape, the 16:9 proportion of the “E” and the perspective with a vanishing point at the center, seem to evoke a screen projection cone, thus taking the logo away from the “we are global” approach to something more aggressive and less idealistic like “we shoot images made out of light into your eyes.”

Although I understand that the old logo did need some facelifting, I can’t help but feel that the new one is poorly executed. The “E” bothers me. When mixing parallel lines and arches so closely together, one should pay attention to some basic “gestalt” principles. The effect is awkward, not so beautiful and in smaller sizes or on screen, seems more like a defect. I also see a small kerning problem: Checking the logo on my latest cable bills, the distance between the “E” and the “T” seems to be identical to that of the “N” and the “E”, when, given the empty space under the “T,” it should be smaller, to balance the counterforms.

Regarding the concept, it’s interesting to note that when idealized, the former logo used the stripes of the “E” just to evoke interconnection. But as the company widened their scope to provide internet access and VoIP too, the three stripes became also an appropriate analogy for their three-product combo.

Thanks to Guilherme Appolinário for the tip.

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Brazilian NET is the biggest cable based multi services company in Latin America, providing cable TV service to more than 3 million customers and broadband internet to more than 2.5 million. Controlled by media giant Globo (the 3rd biggest privately owned broadcaster in the world, after CBS and NBC and whose logo was previously reviewed on Brand New), NET began as a cable TV provider in 1991, to later offer also internet access and VoIP services. Recently, a new NET logo was released, with almost no noise about it — perhaps a symptom of the overall neglect that logo design is still treated with in Brazil.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners