SBC, which (incred­i­bly!) now owns AT&T, decided to rename itself AT&T. The change evi­dently war­ranted a newer, more ridicu­lous logo. I will not attempt to defend 1984′s “Death Star” ver­sion, but I’m not fond of the new “sliced rib­bons” look either.

For starters, where I went to first grade, we were taught that acronyms, ini­tials, and the first let­ters of proper nouns should be set in upper­case. They might have missed that lesson.

Most annoy­ingly, the new type­face is dis­tinc­tively Euro­pean. That, to me, seems pretty dumb for a com­pany whose first name is “American.”

It’s curi­ous to note also how print­ing tech­nol­ogy has changed the rules for what is an “accept­able” logo: for the new spher­i­cal shape to appear on paper, the print­ing press must be capa­ble of accu­rately repro­duc­ing a very tight band of grayscale around the periph­ery. That would not have been quite so triv­ial a task 20 years ago. I’m curi­ous to see how it will appear on vehi­cles, since it can be nei­ther painted (eas­ily) nor cut from vinyl.

1939	1969	1984	2005