HP is currently a company without a strong identity. This
comes after a decade of products and CEOs that each fumbled in one way
or another. The company needs to make a sharp statement and emerge from
the doldrums that has seemingly trapped the iconic Palo Alto company.
The purposed logo and rebranding (videos below) shown here would be a
great first start.
The story goes that the designs shown here were drawn up by Brand New
and released a few months back (prior to the ousting of Apotheker.) The
abstract four line logo is a clever play on the classic HP logo using a
13-degree slant, which is already a common feature in many HP products.
As the verge notes,
it’s a bold design and perhaps one that’s too radical for the
slow-moving corporate machine that is HP. But it’s hard to look at that
logo and not dream of HP rising from the ashes with those four lines
proudly displayed on its standards waving over the consumer electronics
battlefield.
HP’s
current CEO, Meg Whitman, has the daunting task of steering HP. She’s
the fifth leader in as many years with the task. So far during her time
at HP’s helm the company’s stock has slowly regained lost value. One of
her first major announcements was that HP’s personal systems group, the
part of the company that makes PCs, would stay within HP rather than
being spun off. She is in a sense reorganizing HP, an HP that needs
rebranding as much as it needs to stop hawking printer ink that costs
more than the printers themselves.
Apparently the project began way back in 2008 and was just recently
released to the public. Clearly the new logo and branding has not been
implemented, and seeing how the design company released it themselves,
HP will probably never use it. Companies tend to package rebranding with
a major marketing campaign to maximize exposure. But HP needs to do
something along these 13 degree lines. They might make capable computers
but there is little excitement around the brand.
UnderConsideration astutely
that “HP’s logo has been around for so long that it’s not really
questionable anymore, it just is and it just exists.” Per Moving Brand’s
charts, the slated HP letters first appeared in 1941. Over the years
the two letters have seen little change, more often updates involved
adding and remove a surrounding shape like a rectangle or circle. But
the two letters, H-P, representing the company’s founders, Bill Hewlett
and Dave Packard, have remained constant. And they should. However, HP
is a stale, lifeless machine and needs a shot of energy. Whether HP will
ever implement Moving Brands’ four line logo (they won’t), or instead
uses something different, the logo and HP brand need to evolve to help
springboard the company into a new era of exciting products — yeah, the
logo is just the start, and HP actually needs to make exciting products as well but that’s a topic for another “HP Sucks” post.
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