RR04: Haskett CH. 7-8

This weeks reading seemed somewhat dry (which is sad seeing as the book has reached its end), however I was interested in the part about the British public telephones during this week’s reading. In the 1980s the United Kingdom decided to replace the old red-box public telephones with a newer model. Although the newer kiosks were more efficient, the United Kingdom citizens were not happy with the change from the old red boxes. This is astonishing to me because in America, everyone wants to be more efficient and productive because we have put so much on our plates that we have no time to do anything so anything that works faster must be better. I think in recent years, Americans have stopped caring about the way things used to be and all they want is the latest look, whether in electronics or fashion. I think the red telephone boxes look sweet and because they are so iconic to the British population I think I would be pretty upset that they changed them too. I mean they could have kept a few of the old ones and mix in some of the new, or even just keep the same look, but update the system used for them. To me this seems like the ideal move.

I was also interested with the corporate logo section for the reading. As I stated in my previous post about the Gap logo change conflict, logos are an important part of a company. If you change it and people do not like it, then you will surely hear about it. In high school one of my art teacher’s husband was paid for changing the AT&T logo from a 2D look, having straight horizontal lines inside of the circle, to a 3D look, by curving the lines inside of the circle. I think most companies try to stay close to their original logo so that consumers will know the brand, but others completely change their logo because they want to completely change their company’s image. I think it is cool how simply changing lines in a logo can affect a company so much for the better or the worst.