# Verizon new logo (2015)

> Verizon launched a new logo in Sep 2015, designed by Pentagram. New logo.

## Key facts

- Brand: Verizon
- Launched: Sep 2015
- Studio: Pentagram
- What changed: New logo.
- Why: Verizon said its new logo was meant to stand for simplicity, honesty and joy in a category overrun with confusion, and to scale across the brand without adding noise.
- Industry: Telecom
- Logos: https://rebrandlog.com/logos/verizon-2015/before.svg (before), https://rebrandlog.com/logos/verizon-2015/after.png (after)

## The rebrand, explained

Verizon had worn the same identity since the company was formed in 2000: a Landor design with an italic name, a red swooping z and a giant red check, the corporate equivalent of a go-faster stripe. In September 2015, days after it closed a $4.4 billion purchase of AOL, it replaced all of it.

The new logo is the word verizon in black, lowercase, upright and set in Helvetica, with the check reduced to a small red tick sitting after the final n. The red z is gone. Verizon called it a cleaner, more human design and described the check as the universal symbol for getting things done. Chief marketing officer Diego Scotti said the V had simply become the check mark, and that the brand should stand for simplicity, honesty and even joy in a category overrun with confusion, disclaimers and frustration.

The work came from Michael Bierut at Pentagram, credited by Verizon's launch material and by Design Week. Bierut knew what was coming. He told Adweek that before the week was out someone would say their four-year-old could have done it, and that he took that as a compliment: children draw hearts and peace signs because they are universally understood. The logo, he said, was not meant to be clever or flashy, just to scale across a brand with a big footprint without adding to the noise.

He was right about the four-year-old. Digiday headlined that the logo bored people and rivals to tears, and a branding consultant it spoke to called the shrunken check a diminishing move. T-Mobile's John Legere lifted the font and tick within hours for a checklist of Verizon's sins, which turned the #NewVerizonLogo hashtag into a pile-on by designers. It also launched in the shadow of Google's new logo the same week.

The critique misses the job. A telecom that sells on reliability does not need a lightning bolt; it needs a name that reads at any size and a mark small enough to sit beside sub-brands like the go90 video service it was about to launch. The tick is almost too modest, but modesty was the brief, and the identity has outlasted the jokes.

In short: Bierut's deliberately boring fix: a wordmark that whispers in a category that shouts.

## Other rebrands of Verizon

- [Verizon (2024)](https://rebrandlog.com/rebrand/verizon-2024/) 26 Jun 2024

## Sources

- https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_for_verizon_by_pentagram.php
- https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9249825/verizon-new-logo
- https://www.pentagram.com/work/verizon/story

## Cite this

Rebrand Log, "Verizon new logo (2015)", https://rebrandlog.com/rebrand/verizon-2015/, last updated 2026-10-20.