Saudi Telecom Company is a Saudi Arabia digital company providing solutions in telecommunication, IT, financial technology, digital media, cybersecurity, and more. The brand used to have a monopoly on mobile phone services but lost it in 2007. STC was founded in 1998 as Saudi Telecom Company.
While the earlier versions of the STC logo were bilingual, the company later decided to make a minimalist logo, where only the international name could be seen.
What is STC
Saudi Telecom Company is a digital company working in such segments as telecommunications, Internet, digital solutions for business, fintech, and computer networks.
The original logo was also the most detailed one.
For one, it featured the old name of the company, which already occupied a lot of space in spite of the fact that the letters were rather light. The letters looked elegant, with subtle curves and serifs. The Arabic wordmark could be seen above. Both the wordmarks were light blue.
The emblem could be seen to the right. It was centered around two interconnected links of a chain. It is a universal symbol of connection, which is understood by people from different corners of the globe. As the connection is, in a way, the essence of telecommunications, the emblem can be considered meaningful.
The links are placed inside a square with a yellow field at the top and a blue field below.
The name of the company in the global part of the STC logo was abbreviated, which already resulted in a simpler design. The authors of the wordmark opted for an utterly simple sans, where letters were formed by strokes of equal thickness.
The Arabic wordmark still contained the full name. Yet, it was made smaller and placed below the global version. As a result, the overall impression of the typographical part was that it became by far more minimalist and easier to grasp.
Also, the design grew brighter, with better contrast. For one, this resulted from the black letters. But the new colors of the emblem were also more vibrant than those in the previous version.
There were several shades of dark and light purple combined with several shades of yellow. The gradient resulted in a 3D effect.
As for the shape of the emblem, it was rather abstract. A layperson would have said that there was something similar to a bird or ice cream.
The type was slightly refined. The ends of the letters adopted diagonally rounded ends. The central stroke in the “S” was now oriented diagonally, too. As a result, we got a more dynamic style.
The emblem also was tweaked. Then again, the updates were so subtle, they were barely noticeable even during a side-by-side comparison.
The only features that were borrowed from the previous logo were the purple color and the simple style of typography. The logo, however, was redrawn resulting in a sleek and modern design. The project was developed by Interbrand.
While the brand’s palette includes several colors, the actual STC logo combines just two of them. In addition to white (hex: #ffffff; RGB: 255 255 255), there is also a rich and saturated shade of purple (hex: #4F008c, PMS: 2607C, RGB: 79 0 140).
The customized type is based on a clean sans with classic proportions.