UScellularCopied

The fourth largest wireless carrier in the United States had not changed its look since 1999. Adweek framed the context bluntly: while Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile fought for market share, the spotlight rarely fell on UScellular, a Chicago based carrier with 5.1 million subscribers against Verizon's 94 million, but one with low churn thanks to its emphasis on service, a slogan of We speak Fair and a website promising a network that puts customers first. On 24 September 2020, Telecompetitor reported, the company unveiled a new brand and logo, and with it a new spelling: U.S. Cellular became UScellular.

Losing the periods is the conceptual move. A company spokesperson told Telecompetitor that the logo honours the past while taking the brand into the future through two features. The blades of the star signify the power of individuals coming together to create positive change, and the emphasis on US highlights the company's commitment to all of the communities it serves. In other words, the abbreviation for United States now doubles as the pronoun us. Adweek's headline summed up the intent: a new logo to show the carrier puts customers first, from a brand so preoccupied with looking after customers that it would naturally try to carry that mission into its branding.

Telecompetitor placed the change in a wave of telecom rebrands that autumn, citing CenturyLink becoming Lumen and Windstream updating its logo but not its name. For a regional carrier competing against three national giants, the timing let it present a fresher face just as the industry was talking about brand.

The us reading is a genuinely clever bit of typography, one of those ideas that seems obvious once you see it, and it gives a geographic name an emotional second meaning at almost no cost. The star of converging blades is less successful. It reads as a generic burst, and stars are a familiar device in corporate logos. The lowercase wordmark is clean but faceless. Overall this is a smart verbal idea wrapped in a competent but forgettable visual system, which is still more than most carrier rebrands manage. Dropping two periods also makes the name easier to type, which matters more than any star.