Zain is the name of the mobile operator from Kuwait, which was established in 1983. Today the company operates in seven more counties and has an audience of almost 50 million people. The company is very active in social media, with its YouTube channels, which have about a million followers.
The influential and reputable company from the Middle East was established in 1983 as MTC and rebranded only in 2007. So its visual identity history can be divided into two eras — the MTC one, which started in 1983 and finished in 2007, and the Zain era, which is still on today. There was only one logo created for each of the two names.
The stylized telephone reception tower on the logo of the Mobile Telecommunications Co, created in 1983, looks like a chic architectural element, drawn in a calm purple color on the background with a bright blue outline, and framed in five thin rings of the same purple shade. The logo is full of style, taste, and geometrical perfection.
The logo, created for MTC was very simple and calm. It was composed of a graphical emblem in two shades of blue, placed in the left from the wordmark in the lowercase. The wordmark was executed in a clean and delicate sans-serif typeface with its letter “M” italicized and the horizontal bar of the “T” shortened.
The MTC emblem featured an abstract image with a horizontal striped pattern, its left side arched and its right part having a thin elongated triangle on the background.
The logo also features a tagline “Mobile Telecommunications & Co”, which was written in a title case using a bold sans-serif font.
With the new name, the new logo was introduced in 2007. It was something really progressive and stylish, so even though the insignia was designed in the middle of the 2010s, it looks very strong and actual today too.
The Zain emblem is composed of a black horizontally-oriented rectangle with its angles rounded. Inside the rectangle, there is bright turquoise-green lettering in the lowercase and a graphical image on its left. The image resembles an abstract swirl and is executed in the same shade of turquoise, but with an additional of purple to some lines.
The 2019 design uses the same spiral and text as its predecessor, except completely black, without any background and that single paint stroke above the helix, for some reason.
The Zain inscription is all set in the lowercase except for the last letter, “N”, which looks solid and elegant. The custom typeface of the lettering has its angles rounded and the tails of the lines slightly curled and pointed at one side. The font was designed specifically for the brand, and doesn’t have any analogs, but is probably based on Como Bold, with its full shapes.
The black and turquoise color palette of the Zain visual identity looks young, fresh, and cool. It is not a common combination for logo design, and the additions of light purple make it even fancier and chicer.