before

after

Established in 1991, Infotech Enterprises is an “engineering, network, and operations solutions company” — which I’m not even remotely trying to explain but of which you can get the gist in the brand video below. Headquartered in Hyderabad, India with 12,000 employees across 38 offices worldwide, it provides services to large aerospace, manufacturing, transportation, utilities, and communications companies. This week, the company announced it would change its name to Cyient and introduced a new identity designed by Wolff Olins.

Krishna Bodanapu said, “We decided on a constructed word that implies both the type of solutions we develop and also recognizes our company history, heritage and the values we will carry forward. Cyient has connotations to the words ‘client’ and ‘science’ — two important components in our company’s success — and ‘ient’ references Infotech Enterprises, our foundation and continuity. All of our efforts in this important initiative were developed to fulfill our vision of ‘Designing Tomorrow Together.’”

Cyient press release

The previous logo looked like one of those prop companies in a movie to represent the giant, out-of-touch corporation where the lead character works in a doldrum existence. To continue my corporations-in-film comparisons, the new name now sounds like the holding company of Skynet, Tyrell Corporation, and Omni Consumer Products: Cyient. It’s actually not bad, kind of generic but a vast improvement over Infotech Enterprises and the name is softened by the corporate-yet-friendly logo with the dot in the “E”. It’s not the most distinguishing mark on its own, but enough to stand out from the sea of corporate sans serif wordmarks. The dotted “E” becomes the anchor for the typography in the identity.

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The dot, nicknamed the “Enhancer Dot”, also serves as a framing device in application. It’s subtle, you can see it in the brochure covers and the airport sign, and it’s a rather nice design gesture that goes well along with the spare layouts. There is nothing game-changing about this identity but for a global , India-based corporation, this has sufficient design differentiation to make it relatively exciting.