OnePlus is a Chinese company, established in 2013, and specialized in the production of smartphones for the global market. It is a division of BBK Electronics, one of the largest Asian manufacturers of gadgets and home appliances.
Meaning and history
OnePlus is a Chinese smartphone and accessory brand. OnePlus, founded by former OPPO vice president Pete Lau in 2013, is a division of Chinese electronics manufacturer BBK Electronics. The main goal of the OnePlus brand is to expand the geographic presence of the products manufactured by BBK Electronics and to reach beyond China. In April 2014, the company unveiled its first smartphone called OnePlus One.
The OnePlus One smartphone was well-received by journalists and ordinary users. In general, it was not inferior to more expensive competitors, the weakest link was the camera. One of the main advantages of the OnePlus One is the CyanogenMod system. But Micromax company owned the exclusive rights to the Cyanogen brand in India. So OnePlus violated their rights by starting to sell their smartphones with the Cyanogen logo on the body. Micromax went to court and got a temporary ban on OnePlus One smartphone sales in India, and all devices sold before that could not receive system updates.
On July 28, 2015, the new OnePlus 2 smartphone was announced. It was greeted as warmly as the first smartphone, although many were confused by the design. The characteristics of the OnePlus 2 were still on par with the other flagships, but the new smartphone had more nuances than the OnePlus One.
In October 2015, the company introduced the OnePlus X smartphone, aimed at the mid-price segment. And in June 2016, OnePlus introduced its new flagship OnePlus 3. Just five months after the announcement of the OnePlus 3, the company announces a new flagship OnePlus 3T.
The Chinese have a very important superstition: a dislike of the number 4. Many buildings ignore quarter floors, and OnePlus even decided not to release a smartphone with the prefix “4”. So the summer of 2017 saw the announcement of the flagship OnePlus 5.
OnePlus creates and releases new models quite often, and tries to add more and more innovative technologies to each new smartphone.
What is OnePlus?
OnePlus is the name of a Chinese company producing smartphones and accessories. The brand was founded in 2013 and is a division of BBK Electronics. The company was founded by Pete Lau, a former vice president of OPPO, the main competitor of OnePlus.
In terms of visual identity, OnePlus is a very stylish and progressive brand, which chooses clean geometric shapes and intense colors for its logo. The red and white color palette represents an active and developing company, which is confident, stable, and powerful.
2013 – 2020
The original OnePlus badge, designed in 2013, has stayed with the Chinese smartphone manufacturer for almost seven years. It was a horizontally-oriented rectangular badge in red and white; with the red “1” set on a white background in the left part of the banner, and the white “OnePlus” written in uppercase across the solid red rectangle in the right part. The number “1” was enclosed into a square red frame with a plus symbol in the upper-right corner. As for the lettering, the “One” part was set in a bolder type, than the “Plus”.
2020 – Today
In 2020 the OnePlus badge get a refinement, keeping the original concept and color palette, but with all the elements strengthened and modernized. The square frame around the “1” was emboldened; while the digit itself was rewritten in a more modern font. As for the right part of the banner, it now also featured a transparent white background, and then a bold uppercase inscription in the heavy sans-serif font was also redrawn in red.
Font and color
The stable and modern uppercase lettering from the primary OnePlus logo is set in a geometric sans-serif font with confident characters executed in thick lines with clean distinctive contours. The closest fonts to the one, used in this insignia, are, probably, Nimbus Sans D Bold, or Helvetica Bold.
As for the color palette of the OnePlus visual identity, it is based on a bright, and slightly aggressive, combination of scarlet-red and white, scheme, standing for progressiveness, development, and growth. The red in the logo makes the brand look powerful and unique, and stands out in the list of its competitors.