Nokia is quite possibly one of the biggest success stories of the mobile phone boom. What started off as a relatively small company dabbling in bits and pieces, ranging from paper to rubber to electronic products is now a massive brand known purely, if not exclusively for its mobile phones.
Many people misinterpret Nokia’s success as simply being there at the right time, but that is a gross insult to the near flawless goings on of the company. Back when mobile phones first came out they were not only clunky but very unuser-friendly and certainly not marketed to the common person. Very slowly mobile phone manufacturers started noticing that it wasn’t just so called businessmen who wanted mobile communication, but everyone did. Nokia had been since the 1980’s developing commercial mobile telephones and in the early 90’s had developed the GSM standard, the standard all of us in the UK and Europe use to make calls.
Despite being the leader in the development of the mobile network technology Nokia never took their eye off the consumers. Often, a company that is the leader in the development of technology takes the arrogant approach of seeing the common man as someone unworthy of attention. Take IBM for example.
Nokia were the first mobile phone manufacturer to successfully make good quality mobile handsets with a mind on ensuring a clear and user friendly user interface. That is the reason for their initial success. The reason for their continuing success was because again they never took their eye off the ball, the everyday consumer. Products were developed with the consumer in mind, whilst other manufacturers were taking the arrogant approach of if they want it than they’ll buy it. Nokia wanted to know what people wanted, why they wanted it, how they wanted it, when they wanted it. Not only innovators in the technology behind mobile phones and the mobile phone network system but innovators in their approach to consumers.
Not only was innovation and consumer focus was at the forefront of Nokia’s strategy but also the development of the brand. The only mobile phone company to have a branded and copyrighted ringtone on all their handsets, people knew when they heard that ringtone, that person was using a Nokia, regardless of whether they could see the handset. A simple, yet immensely effective tool for raising brand awareness.
Many companies stay away from having taglines or mottos, after all it’s a dead moot situation if you develop a tagline that people just don’t identify with. Not Nokia though. As a result of their marketing pitches at the start of their mobile phone development they identified one goal, to connect people. Once they developed the GSM technology and the handsets for it, they certainly were connecting people. Personally, I can’t think of any other brand tagline that can outrank Nokia’s. Simple, relevant and self descriptive. To go with the motto ‘Connecting People’ they incorporated two hands touching in to their redesigned logo which you can see below.
This is their first logo which was designed in 1871 for the Nokia featuring a fish which leaves many people asking what on earth does fish have to do with what Nokia have ever done? Well, as you may know Nokia weren’t always the mobile phone company we know it as now. And no I’m not about to tell you that they were a fishing company! The name Nokia derived from the town where their first offices were based, yes, you guessed it, somewhere called Nokia in Finland! The fish is a reference to the river which was located nearby called Nokiavirta. At this point in time, the company Nokia were manufacturing paper.
Perhaps it’s the sentimental fool within me but I rather like this logo. Effervescently simple whilst incredibly identifiable as a brand logo. If this logo was used today in other industries I don’t think many people would be critical of its design, I can just imagine this logo for a camping equipment company.
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Next, Nokia moved in to manufacturing rubber which was to be their main business, but also moved in to the electronics and cable business. The fish logo however, wasn’t dropped until over 60 years later when this new logo was introduced in 1965. By this time, Nokia’s main focus was on the cable industry.
I really dislike this logo and to be honest I think it’s one of the worst I’ve seen from the 1960’s. It looks like a poor man’s mashup of Pepsi meets Nokia. Says nothing about the company and is so bland if you saw it you wouldn’t notice it. But hey, they were manufacturing rubber and cable, a personable brand logo wasn’t exactly vital for their success. No surprise though that this logo lasted just under a year
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Now, this is where I have a logo missing. I’m not the only one, but I seem to be the only one who acknowledges it existed. Most people when discussing the evolution of the Nokia logo will jump straight to the next one. The one before this logo was identical, however featured the text ‘MOBILE PHONES’. I do have a screenshot of it from a magazine advert where you can see the logo.
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The change here isn’t just the addition of colour, but the removal of ‘MOBILE PHONES’. By this time Nokia had either recognised or decided that they should or would be known for one thing and one thing only, mobile phones. The need to state what Nokia does was moot. The colour of the Nokia text is a light blue colour, soft yet clear. The reason for the colour blue isn’t immediately obvious, it’s a reference to their home country; Finland. Their flag features a cross of the colour blue. I’m sure if I remember correctly, but when Nokia first started colourising the text in their logo it featured a blue very close to the dark blue of the Finnish flag but over time changed to the lighter blue we see now.
The trident/fork icon used in the logo is a reference to mobile phone cells, the connection from your phone to the towers. The focus at this time on mobile handsets was reception, people were put off buying them because of a fear that there would simply be no reception for them to make phone calls. Nokia needed to remind people that not only were they capable of building handsets which didn’t suffer the “CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW” syndrome of other phones but also that they were the ones behind the GSM technology. A job well done I think.
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Nokia then dropped the trident icon from their logo and stuck to just text, but not any old text, this time featuring their new found slogan “Connecting People” which I believed was coined by Ove Strandberg, one of the key players in Nokia’s success. The issue I have with this logo is that the two type fonts simply don’t go well together and the typeface for the ‘Connecting People’ text is bog standard Times New Roman. I’m not 100% as to how long this logo lasted but again, if geek memory serves me correct it was less than a year till it was redesigned to the logo we know today.
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This time Nokia hired a professional typographer to redesign the logo, Erik Spiekermann of Germany who is a pretty well known and well respected typography expert and designer. The “Connecting People” text is now complementary in design to the Nokia typeface. This is why you get professionals in!
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So is this the last of the Nokia logo rebrands? Will we see a completely new, more hip and trendy one? Well, my money is on a major rebranding within the next 5 years. Nokia has seen its sales stall over the past 5 years and I believe this is down to one thing and one thing only. The Apple iPhone.
Without getting in to a vicious diatribe about the iPhone I will instead criticise Nokia for obsessing over what the iPhone is and does. Nokia has been well known for it’s own unique designs and for leading the mobile phone world in innovation, not imitation. You know the ball they’ve been keeping their eye on? Well I think they’ve lost that focus and instead are obsessing over the iPhone.
I think their current logo is outdated and is in need of a change. It reminds me too much of the late 90’s and doesn’t inspire one to think of innovation, something they can’t assume people will associate with their brand any more.
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