Bilingual Rebranding

Batelco—the Bahrain Telecommunications Company—is the largest provider of internet, mobile and telephone services in Bahrain, partly because until recently it was a monopoly. And, as first reported on Brand New, Batelco recently updated its identity to reflect both its lead position in a new competitive market and its bilingual reality.

The previous logo was remarkably dull and generic—though perhaps expected for a government-run organization. It also demonstrates some of the typographic limitations that limited multi-lingual works on the English/Arabic divide before the recent explosion of semitic language typefaces.

The previous logo (left) and the new logo (right)


The new logo, in contrast, is remarkably strong and memorable. According to Futurebrand, the designers of this new identity campaign, Batelco's logo evokes "the idea of what you can 'be' with Batelco. Our new identity celebrates Batelco as a Bahraini icon, linking us in colour and with the letter B to our country. The bilingual logo, which reads as both an English and Arabic letter B, also resembles an infinity sign, further communicating Batelco's omnipresence throughout Bahrain."

Additionally, we love that the logo's shape is clearly evocative of the island country's shape, including the Hawar Islands off the southeast coast.

Have a look at the new logo in the wild. FB






(ref: Brand New "To Batelco and Beyond")