We’ve taken some big steps towards launching the new brand with more to see at CTIA this week. Things have been developing nicely so I thought I’d take a breather from the brand launch plan to share some thoughts on what the new Symbian is all about.
The new Symbian is all about a passion for openness and about the freedom to create. It stands for collaboration, for community, for humanity. For making things better! For all things ‘open’.
It is a brand that’s human and playful and friendly, where you feel the human hand. A brand that enables you to discover unlimited creative possibilities, that wants to share and talk A brand that’s fun, that isn’t fixed, but free to constantly evolve. A brand that’s owned by all the people that create and build with Symbian. A brand that celebrates new ideas and creativity in all forms. A brand that’s truly alive and refreshingly different, because it is! A brand that’s human to the core and that underneath beats a human heart.
We’d very much like for everyone within our community to be a part of our brand and help us to develop it. We welcome all creative ideas and thoughts.
the symbian foundation font with shadow effect used on top of the page is realllly school boyish. I would have expected a bit more professionalism to be exhitibited. After all, all of this is a big part of branding process.
The idea behind the 3D font, and the whole brand, is that it is hand-drawn and created by the human hand. The word Symbian was actually drawn with a pen and then scanned in for use online. Our new brand image is playful and relaxed with a movement away from the corporate style. However, that is not to say that we are not professional or serious as we will also be delivering a diverse and regularly updated set of SDKs, tools and documentation too.
I didn’t like the look of the brand at the beginning, but have really warmed to it in the last few weeks.
I find that when people see how all the different elements of the branding cartoons and doodles fit together – in the animations and other creative designs – then they lose any initial scepticism they had about the brand design.
// David W.
The logos are quite good. The only one I really dislike is the heart logo, ironically in this post. It’s the least inventive and at worst twee.
I’m pleasantly surprised by the direction that the brand’s going in, for what it’s worth.
As someone who is interested in the bleeding edge of technology, I would like to see Symbian being synonymous with innovation.
Right now mobile innovation = iPhone, when will Symbian take that crown?
Branding starts with small things: create desktop wallpapers, mobile phone wallpapers, ring tones, show us video interviews with engineers.
i’ll be honest. The Symbian Foundation font on top is very close to comic sans with a touch of MS Word Clipart. I dont think anyone believes it is hand drawn. Sorry for being so brutally frank but its better someone who can do something reads this and takes corrective action.
Also, I didnt mean to say that the team is not professional, i just meant to say that the font doesnt give a very professional image.
I like the creativeness of the brand, and the heart bring a human aspect to it. I’m very happy that the foundation did not go for a cold, techie, corporate blue type of approach. There’s enough of those already out there.
The brand is both innovative and professionally done.
Who judges what is and isn’t professional? I wear jeans to work, does this make me unprofessional? As long as I am brilliant at my job (for the most part) nobody cares what I wear.
I think what could concern people is that it doesn’t look like a typical technology brand. There’s no hard, straight lines; no symmetry; no… control.
However, when you consider what the Symbian Foundation and, by extension, open-source software development is all about I think this branding is actually very fitting. Furthermore by being different and, arguably, a bit controversial the brand attracts a lot more attention than if they had just gone for some middle-of-the-road corporate imagery.
Thats my $0.02 anyway
I rather like the new branding and look. I’m not an expert on such things though. I can see why some people think it doesn’t look professional (and in a way I agree), but I’m not sure that’s the over riding concern. It stands out and there’s an element of fun in the doodles. Given its about appealing to a tech industry that seems sensible to me. It wouldn’t fit a consumer band / traditional company, but that’s not what it is for!
Hi Rafe, You got it spot on actually. “It wouldn’t fit a consumer band” .
Do we expect consumers to go into a mobile shop and ask for a phone that runs on ‘Symbian’ or not?
If we do, then SF needs to create a consumer brand. Something which Symbian and S60 miserably failed to do and something which Windows Mobile and Google with Android are fairly good at.
IMHO, Not creating a consumer brand would be essentially repeating the same mistake that Symbian and S60 made.
[...] I think that the Symbian Foundation are to be congratulated. Their new brand is, as they claim, human and playful and friendly. It is highly distinctive and yet it feels instantly familiar. This makes it memorable and, [...]
[...] remember drawing that 3D font when at school (and according to the Symbian Blog the actual logo was drawn by hand and scanned [...]
So there isn’t actually a font anywhere that I can download for the new Symbian Foundation style? Shame. There’s a lot of mobile bloggers on the host I use and I promised an SF blog theme for them a while ago but finding that font has been awful. If anyone knows something similar, let me know please.
I like the style myself, and I’ve seen it draw more than a few of my readers towards Symbian phones in the future as it has a kind of nostalgic appeal to it. Just like the Android robot calls back memories of Sam, the old robot mascot for the SAM Coupe computer and days spent programming while listening to Billy Idol, the style of the Symbian Foundation brings back Monty Python memories for quite a few of us and memories of laughing and having fun. It’s a kind of cyborg brand, feeling powerful and mechanical yet alive. Like one of my readers said, “I don’t know why but it just works.”, and if that’s not a successful consumer brand image then I don’t know what is.