This blows my mind at so many levels... It was a branding pitch video originally shown to Bell executives. At the time, it was the largest rebranding project ever undertaken in U.S. history.
Look at the work that went into this. The thinking behind it is timeless. Heck, this presentation could be given today and most of the insights would still apply. We think we're so much smarter today, but we're not. This is over 40 years old and everything they said and did are the things today's "experts" are still learning.
via under consideration
The best part of this video is that we also know that pretty much everything Bass said ended up being right. Through his work, that symbol achieved an over 93% recognition rate among Americans. I would argue that it would likely still be very high even today despite not having been used in over 25 years when Bell became AT&T in 1984 (launching another iconic Bass design in the famous original "Death Star" AT&T logo).
Saul Bass has always been my all time branding idol. This only reinforces that.
- Rich Gould
- Rich Gould is co-founder of Razor Creative, a Moncton based marketing, branding and design agency that was acquired in 2016. Besides that, he's a Superdad, an illustrator, hockey coach, ivory tickler and offbeat drummer.