Last June 13, PLDT and SMART unveiled their new logo. The video of the unveiling was posted by Rappler.

For a company with the passion to innovate, I’d say they made a very unsatisfying job in coming up with an identity.

I would like to think the companies are trying to come up with something simply iconic. Simplicity is the aim of the game. Probably a move to associate anything closely related to this kind of pluffy triangle shape to BOTH brands. But c’mon. How is this something worth a redesign.

Somewhere in the internet I read how the triangles represented the three (3) pillars of the company… companies? I guess both share the same 3 pillars and one of the corners, for some reason, needed a negative space, which doesn’t even CONNECT to the core negative space found in the middle so I don’t know what that even meant.

Needless to say people reacted negatively. And while I initially think people are just natural born haters online, I can’t deny how this work seems lacking.

The personalities of each brand was taken away. This honestly looks like something I can buy for $5 online.

One thing I always do whenever I design brand marks is to go for a flat black and white treatment. I don’t have the files and I won’t even bother tracing this out for that purpose. But putting this in grayscale alone, you’ll see how these two are. And while color plays a big part in a brand, color is never always used or seen.

Maybe MVP was just bored and he’s like “I’ll spend X amount of pesos for a redesign”. A mediocre one.

There are a lot of great identity designers out there. And while yes, it’s tough to come up with a very unique mark nowadays, it’s not impossible.