Something Borrowed?

It's relatively okay to be inspired by brands and consolidate it with yours. Design and writing, I believe, are always a reincarnation of the past things made like a beautiful paraphrase of a thought or an image. Sometimes, however, you have to point out the obviously plagiarised from the truly inspired.

When I saw the old and new logos of PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (or Telkom) over at Brand New, I have this inkling feeling that they are so "inspired" by the logos of the two top telecoms in the Philippines.

With Telkom's old logo, it looks like an amalgamation of Globe and Smart's old identities.

You can see Globe's "globe" with an addition of disarrayed and horizontally flipped lines of Smart's. The only added factor for difference is the gradient color of the circle.

And now, with Telkom's relaunch under the brand positioning of "Life Confident", their new logo sorta gives off the vibe that it was strongly infuenced by Globe's "Globe Life" logo.

What's more surprising is that Telkom's new tag line "The World is in Your Hand" is a play of Globe's tagline Abot Mo Ang Mundo or, if translated from Filipino to English, "The World is within Your Reach".

What saved it from screaming copycat is the workaround with the typography. Globe uses a bold italics of Myriad Pro while Telkom uses Gotham Rounded.

Just stating the obvious.

All logos are owned and copyrighted by the respective companies.