TIM (2016)Copied

Telecom Italia had run two worlds: the historic fixed line company and TIM, the mobile brand launched in 1995. Wired Italia reported that the process of merging them had been under way for about two years, and in the months before January 2016 the company had already unified all commercial operations under TIM, the old acronym for its mobile arm. On 13 January, at the Salone delle Fontane in Rome's EUR district, it presented the logo to go with it, with Telecom Italia giving way to TIM as the single brand on every front.

The new mark removes the old container shape. According to the company, the logo is a red icon representing a T beside a white wordmark on blue, set in a proprietary TIM Sans, and the historic biscuit shaped badge is gone while the distinctive blue stays. Wired described what disappeared: the waves that were the graphic visualisation of an analogue signal. The red and blue remain, and five red rectangles form a T shaped space, which many people online read as an I Ching symbol for mountain, or compared to the Emergency charity logo and a timeline widget.

Chief executive Marco Patuano framed it as more than cosmetics. In the company's announcement he said the decision to converge all commercial offers on TIM combined the solidity and scale of Telecom Italia with TIM's innovative personality, reflecting fixed mobile convergence enabled by the internet, devices and digital platforms, and marked a shift from pure telephone operator to industrial and technology player. Brand strategy director Carlotta Ventura told Wired the main goal was to simplify customers' choices with one clear proposal, and that the mobile name won because mobile access is the most natural fit for everyday life. The launch campaign featured Tim Berners-Lee, Fabio Fazio and Pif.

Wired's verdict, neither beautiful nor ugly, is about right. Killing the waves was overdue; they signalled analogue radio. The red T of rectangles is responsive and works at any size, which is the real brief for a telco that lives in app icons. But it is also generic, and the meme comparisons arrived within hours for a reason. The brand architecture decision is the bold part here. The logo is a competent badge for it, not an idea in itself.