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Logitech doesn't do mice alone anymore. The Swiss company has in recent years expanded beyond peripherals into speakers, mobile accessories, tablet keyboards, and more.
The company long known for making the best mouse on the market, not to mention the best iPad keyboard and the best TV remote, is ditching the "tech" and calling itself simply Logi (pronounced "lodge-ee"). Gone too is the dated logo—teal, with something that may or may not have been a boomerang—in favor of a sleek, clean design that better reflects its diverse product line.
"If we look out five or ten years, it's going to seem odd for a company to call itself "something-tech," says CEO Bracken Darrell. "There will be tech in your clothing, in your shoes, in your tires. To be Logitech at that point will seem awfully 1980s."
Darrell's been pushing the company into the future since taking the helm in 2012 and turning around its declining profits. "Even then, we knew we needed to reinvent the brand," he says. First, though, he had to reinvent the products. Within two years, he shook up the product portfolio, shifting millions away from mice and investing heavily in new categories like speakers and tablet accessories. The rebrand is the culmination of his efforts.
"They needed to get rid of the old logo," says Tal Leming of Type Supply, a Baltimore typography studio. "It looked like something carved on the side of the Flintstones' house."
When Darrell arrived, he was stunned by Logitech's lack of a design ethos. He'd come from Braun, where he met frequently with Dieter Rams, the German visionary who pioneered the idea of a design-driven company. Like Braun, Logitech had great engineering. But it had no designers. It's products were wonderful to use, but meh to behold. That would not do, so Darrell hired Alastair Curtis, the head of design chief at Nokia. Build a team, he told Curtis, and make our stuff look as good as it works. ad the design efforts at Logitech.
"My goal was to create a design company," Darrell says.
That meant cutting back on mice. Logitech was selling more of them than any other company in the world—it sold its one billionth mouse in 2008— but PC peripheral sales were tumbling. Retail sales fell 8 percent in 2013. Darrell surveyed the landscape to see what markets were growing, cut investment in mice by two-thirds and plowed a good chunk of the companies $100 million R&D budget into tablet accessories, teleconferencing systems, and Bluetooth speakers. Soon after Curtis came onboard, Logitech released the UE Boom—a streamlined cylindrical portable speaker that features bright, bold colors and stellar sound—and a wafer-thin iPad keyboard, also done up in youthful hues. The three new categories generated $380 million in sales during the last two years. "We tripled our profits," Darrell says, and the stock price doubled to $14 per share.
The reborn company needed to be rebranded. Darrell hired Design Studio, the agency behind Airbnb's controversial logo that critics duly noted looks like any number of body parts. Logi's new logo is plump, geometric, and, according to Darrell, "youthful." The curve on the "g" hangs detached, suspended like a grin beneath its round. By all accounts, it's radical departure from earlier sigils, many of which featured a radiating eyeball and a organically shaped splash of teal. "There were people in our company who thought that we owned the color teal," Darrell says. "Teal looks like a very old color now." The new insignia will change color based on which product it's placed.
"It looks like a friendly company now," Leming says. The symmetry—the "l" and "i" mirror each other, as do the two circles—creates a pleasing balance, he says. But the designer has a quibble: the flourish on the top right corner of the of the "g." "It would have been cleaner without it," he says.
Logi will stay true to its roots and continue branding its mice with "Logitech" to capitalize on its excellent rep for PC peripherals. "The brand can go a long, long way," Curtis says, "because it still means a lot to many people." But Darrell says it's just a matter of time, before "tech" disappears from mice, too.
"We are moving out of the computer era," he says. "And we want to make sure consumers understand that."
