“More and more technology needs to be invisible,” says Alastair Curtis, chief design officer of Logitech, “with that recognition, technology is becoming knitted into the everyday fabric of our lives, and it just felt natural to actually mirror that with our name.” It’s a compelling pitch for Logitech’s rebrand as Logi, which has already started to appear on new merchandise this week. When I saw the new name, with its clean and understated logo, I just got stuck on how to pronounce it. But once I eschewed my superficial pronunciation concerns (it’s pronounced lodge-ee), I found that this rebrand was getting at something much deeper than conjuring very small ski lodges.
The official company name will remain Logitech, it’s just the brand that’s being changed to Logi, which reminds us that the two do not have to be the same. A name is made up of letters and it’s a pretty fixed entity; most companies will keep the same name throughout their lifespan. A brand, however, is much more fluid and can be communicated in ways other than language. What do you think of when you see a black swoosh or hear a lion roaring at the beginning of a movie? But that’s another blog entirely. Originally, Logitech came from a portmanteau of logic and technology, a name that hearkens back to the days of the company’s founding in 1981. 34 years later, Logitech was wearing its age on its sleeve and in need of a serious overhaul. Dropping ‘tech’ makes it sound like “you’re interacting with a person more than a corporation,” Curtis said. And if you think that it sounds a lot like Siri, well that’s not a mistake. “Looking into the future of speech recognition, how we talk and communicate with things will change,” Curtis says, “[Logi] helps us be a lot more personal in that world.”
Logi is definitely more approachable than Logitech, and the diminutive ‘ee’ ending furthers the friendliness factor. With Logi, we still get the semantic meaning of logic, which is even emphasized now that stands alone. The multiple meanings of logic work to support the brand as well. Not only does the word logic mean strong reasoning, but it’s also a term used in coding. Logic in a computer program is the set of commands that invisibly carry out a particular task, like the ones in your browser that loaded this page. It’s the complex and cogent technology that works behind the scenes to bring you that sleek and functional interface. By focusing on logic, Logi hasn’t removed tech, they’ve merely embedded it.
Logi is a pithy punch in a world where minimalism and usability are synonymous with quality. They even got rid of that weird eyeball thing on their logo, which apparently symbolized that they were keeping an eye on their customers. Yikes. Apart from the pronunciation, I think they pulled off this rebrand quite logically.
Grade: A-
