Let’s talk briefly about US cell companies. Not a very smart lot as brand management goes. But worst right out of the gate has got to be Verizon. The “Can you hear me now?” ad campaign, since it has run for so long and in so many iterations, seems to have met with some success, but we can’t help but feel that it is not as compelling as it could be. The main reason being, that, when someone on a cell phone says, “Can you hear me now?”, it usually means that the person on the other end has just said “Wait! What did you just say? I can’t hear you!”. We’ve all been there before, and it only conjures up remembrances of cell frustrations past. So why did they decide to go with this dubious phrase as their tag line? The mind boggles.

But worse yet, and a thing that will probably outlast any passing campaign, is Verizon’s logo. Another example of such graphic clunkiness does not affront our eyes as often as this one. The type and the color selection are bland. The tag lines associated with it are usually lame (”Make progress every day”?!? Is this a weight loss program?). And the crowning achievement of yuckiness is that awful fading red check mark. What is that? Why is it there? What does it have to do with mobile telephony? For anyone that studies abstract composition, proportion and the aesthetic relationship of parts within the whole, this is a shining example of what not to do. The red check is large. It is anemically thin compared to the proportion of the type (and the OTHER fading red object). And its angle is compositionally unsettling, having little or no relation to the associated type. As just foreshadowed (brilliant, huh?), the fading red ‘Z’ in ‘Verizon’ just serves to take import away from the red check ‘mark’ and muddy the hierarchical waters of the composition. Overall, a truly bad logo. Of course Verizon survives to this day… but has this lack of design insight on their part hurt the brand? One can only wonder… We can only hope that Verizon merges with some other telecom giant in the near future and they take the opportunity to revamp their logo’s image.

While we’re talking about mergers, we might as well mention the recent merger of Sprint and the blathering half-wit of the US telecom industry, Nextel. As with those rare cases where humans on the short end of the ‘good-looks’ stick, in their union, have begat an adorable child, the resulting logo ain’t all that bad. The old Sprint logo was just plain boring. The Nextel logo was even more so, not to mention their ‘new’ use of the cell phone as beeping walkie-talkie that looks like the person holding it is talking into an old black shoe. Never mind that for the moment. The new Sprint logo has acquired the nice bright yellow of the old Nextel mark. And the new font is just lovely compared with the old. But the curious part is the new Sprint mark. It is pretty enough to look at, but why is it such? We know that their explanation for it is a continuance of the ‘Pin Drop’ idea that they have always been pushing… but for our money, it just doesn’t work anymore. Why does it have to fall and then bounce to form a wing-like glyph? Wouldn’t the more intuitive motion be from side to side? As in a sound wave bouncing into your ear? Why not have it move across the word and then bounce against that vertical bar that was a part of Nextel’s mark to form it’s shape?

Well, the new Sprint logo is a step in the right direction anyway. Now if only Sprint could come up with a line of phones that have some design sense (we gave up on our Sprint account long ago because of this). And as far as Nextel is concerned, please PLEASE stop using your phones like that! A clamshell shape is to hold up to the side of one’s face! Not to hold in front of you and talk into the tip! If you must have walkie-talkie functioning then come up with a new design based on how it should be used, not an afterthought function applied to an old form. And do we have to hear everything the users are saying?!? There’s major design opportunity here. Use it.