CorpComms Magazine

When Internet company AOL disentangled itself from Time Warner in December, it celebrated the occasion with a new look that broke away from the old blue triangle and capital letters and introduced lower case letters and a dot.

As chief executive Tim Armstrong rang the opening bell to herald trading at the New York Stock Exchange, AOL launched a redesigned home page that has no links to its recent past.

The move was hardly surprising. Even Jerry Levin, the former Time Warner chief executive who orchestrated the $350 billion ill-fated merger with AOL in 2000, has described it as 'the worst deal of the century, apparently'.

AOL described its new look as 'a simple confident logotype, revealed by ever-changing images. It's one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal'.

It marks the next step in AOL's history, which involves a complete overhaul of the business and the loss of 2,500 jobs - or one third of the workforce. The smaller logo is reminiscent of the smaller company.

AOL hired Wolff Olins, creator of the brand for the 2012 London Olympics, to design its new image. The Aol. logo comes with a variety of backgrounds, including a goldfish, four graffiti images created by artists Universal Everything, GHAVA and Dylan Griffin, and an obscene hand gesture - which in Italy represents a man whose wife has been unfaithful. A fuzzy blue monster character also appears in some images.

Armstrong described the identity as 'uniquely dynamic. Our business is focused on creating world class experiences for consumers and AOL is centred on creative and talented people - employees, partners and advertisers.'

These 'people' are reflected on the home page of AOL's new corporate site, which has the headings 'Create with us', 'Advertise with us' and 'Work with us'.

In a statement, Karl Heiselman, chief executive of Wolff Olins, said: 'Historically, brand identity has been monolithic and controlling, little more than stamping a company name on the product. AOL is a 21st century company, with an ambitious vision for the future and new focus on creativity and expression; this required the brand identity to be open and generous, to invite conversation and collaboration, and to feel credible, but also aspirational.'

Maureen Sullivan, chief of staff at AOL, said that the company had nearly 100 million visitors to its sites every day, and that raising awareness of the brand was not the purpose of the move. 'We are focused on improving perceptions of our brand by delivering world-class content experiences and products to our users. Our new brand will function as an invitation to the world to reconsider and explore the new AOL and our business priority is to continue to invest in improving our products and properties.'

She added that the company hoped the new brand would also indicate that AOL is entering a new phase of its development, and has moved away from an Internet business to a company that is a 'content pioneer'. 

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