New logo for Amaysim

amaysim is an Australian telecommunications provider founded by Peter O’Connell, Rolf Hansen, Christian Magel, Thomas Enge and Andreas Perreiter in 2010. The name is a contraction of the core brand promise – “amazingly simple”. O’Connell joined forces with the German founders of Simyo, a European MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) to bring the MVNO concept to Australia. amaysim remains the largest MVNO in the country, with over 1.07 million subscribers. It also has one of the lowest volumes of TIO complaints in the industry, and has won numerous awards for its customer service efforts.

The new logo coincides with the launch of the company’s first broadband plans.

Acknowledging, firstly, the orange colour of the old amaysim logo (and its successor), it differentiates from the colours associated with the big three telcos – Vodafone (red), Telstra (blue) and Optus (yellow). A good start in terms of recognition.

The typeface of the old logo – if it was a fully-fledged typeface – was unusual for the lack of spurs in its letterforms (the bits that protrude from main strokes, like on the top-left of the lowercase m or the bottom right of the lowercase a; the Dyson logo is another example of this). Also unusual were the way the a and the s had distinct horizontal segments. That’s not to say these features were bad. In fact, by reducing the letterforms to basic strokes and angles, the logo appeared more constructed than drawn, lending it a suitably tech-y appearance.

The other distinctive feature, of course, was the joining of the y and the s. It was unexpected and worked surprisingly well, preserving the legibility of those characters. An overall interesting logo that, for a simple string of letters, pushed the envelope in its customisation.

The new logo is based on the FF Mark typeface, which has already been used in brand applications for a number of years. Once again, there is some customisation, with the removal of the spur of the m’s and the tittle (or dot) of the i, and the narrowing of the width of the y. There’s really nothing else to it. The new logo has no visual hook, no hidden meanings, nothing that sticks in your mind. Having said that, it is an evolution rather than a revolution, so brand equity is somewhat maintained.

I mentioned that the core brand promise is “amazingly simple”. The logo has just gone a bit too heavy on the “simple”. On a positive note, that it’s in lowercase and set in a plain old geometric sans gives gives it an undeniably friendly appearance, but it’s just too safe. Unfortunately, I must say that the old logo wins out.