identity project

An advertisement from BP I was shown in the Times newspaper caught my attention recently. It’s a new campaign launched by the popular British petroleum distributor giving information about a person or households ‘carbon footprint’ and encouraging people to reduce theirs. Basically a carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted each year due to the energy we use.

BP explain that they are trying to reduce theirs and so far have reduced emissions by over 4 million tonnes, sounds impressive doesn’t it. Funny that a company selling a product that adds to emissions should be so concerned, but I guess that’s the point, to be seen to be doing something to help the environment.

Well it was the logo that caught my eye, mainly because this is the first time a noticed they have updated it.

This is what it used to look like…



And now it looks like this



I think that perhaps the primary reason for this redesign is to appear more eco friendly. Re-designing a logo is usually said to be detrimental to a company as any established brand identity can be lost so this was obviously a large step to take. The reason I say this is because of the new shape. I think it looks just like a flower, conjuring images of nature and cleanliness. The green and yellow colour scheme was there before which helps the transition along with supporting the naturalistic feel to the new logo. Another between shade of green/yellow has been added too. I think this adds to the flower image that is conjured, representing the different shades of a flower.

I always thought BP stood for ‘British Petroleum’ but now the tag line is ‘Beyond Petroleum’ again hinting at a new eco friendly company.

I thought this was a good example of when a logo directly represents what a company is trying to say.