09.10.08
LoGoReDo: T-Mobile

tm_8_angles

In a taxi recently, driving into Philadelphia, we passed a T-Mobile shop that looked really awful. As in the picture below, because of the odd proportions of the logo, the ‘T’ ends up miles from ‘Mobile’.

fascia_1

And as a plonked piece of type, as in this example (from Holland), it doesn’t work too nicely either.

fascia_2

Now, we’re sure that no-one really likes this logo. Let’s face it, as a symbol for a global mobile phone company it’s not really delivering much. Sorry. But, as an exercise, more than anything, we thought we’d set ourselves a challenge.

The challenge was this: improve this donkey of a logo without changing the elements fundamentally. It’s too easy to just change the type or the symbol or the colours. Nope, not allowed. The challenge would be to make what’s there work a lot better.

So, looking at what they have...

tm_1

...the ‘T’ has always looked divorced from the rest of the word. The spaces between the dots look optically wrong. The dots look odd, full stop (pardon the pun). The type looks poorly thought through. Does that dot at the end really work?

So, let’s start.

tm_2

That weird dot spacing is, technically, correct (ie the dots are an equal space apart) but the optical effect of placing the ‘T’ there makes the spacing look optically too big.

tm_5 closerdots

Here we’ve tightened the spacing of the middle three dots, so they look equidistant, but aren’t. A bit better. Actually quite a lot better.

tm_6_tighter

Next we’ve tightened up the letter spacing of ‘mobile’. Better. Still various issues though.

tm_smaller_dots

Here we’ve just made the square dots a bit smaller. There’s still some logic though...

smaller_dot

..they’re spaced out like this, and the width of the dot matches the downstrokes better. Still room for improvement.

tm_8_angles

Those angles versus the square dots look odd to us. And the angled tops of the ascenders are just a hang over from the font’s original job as a body copy face.

tm_9 angles

How about a square dot as well, not a round one? Here’s what all those changes look like.

tm_12_flat_with_dot

So here the angles are straightened throughout. Not bad actually. Trouble is that dot at the end still bugs us - the weight of it will always clash with the outside stroke of the ‘e’.

why_dot?

Let’s try it without the end dot.

tm_11_flattops

That’s better. Maybe, if we’re feeling ambitious, a pink dot?

tm_pink_dot?

So, to summarise, we’ve gone from here...

tm_1

...to here, in about ten steps. In about an hour.

tm_pink_dot?

Looks better to us. Tighter, more structured, but still logical. Obviously, pink and grey and Century condensed might not have been our starting point, but we’re a lot happier now. That Dutch fascia would look like this.

ducth_fascia_2

We enjoyed that. In fact we’re going to do more of these, in idle moments (if T -Mobile’s lawyers haven’t taken us to the cleaners in the meantime). If you have a suggestion for the next LoGoReDo, please email info[at]johnsonbanks[dot]co[dot]uk with your nomination.

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