Airtel, the consumer brand of Bharti Airtel Limited, is one of India’s most visible telecommunications identities. The brand’s visual identity has undergone two major documented transformations: a 2010 global rebranding that introduced the current stylized “a” symbol, and a 2022 refresh that expanded that symbol into a broader brand system.
Design and History
Airtel’s original identity dates to 1995, when the brand launched with a two-swoosh design created by Gullu Sen, then national creative director of Rediffusion-Y&R. The design was developed with the aim of introducing the concept of mobile voice services to India, and the brand was positioned with the tagline “Touch Tomorrow.”[1]
On 18 November 2010, Bharti Airtel unveiled a new global identity across its operations in 19 countries in Asia and Africa, coinciding with the company crossing 200 million customers.[2] The new logo, created by London-based brand agency Brand Union, featured an artistically written lowercase “a” above the wordmark “airtel” in lowercase letters, all in red against a white background.[3][4] The company described the new face of Airtel as youthful, international, inclusive and dynamic.[2]
In May 2011, the company named the new symbol “Wave,” a name selected through an online contest that invited customers to recommend a name for the logo. According to the company, the name referred to the sweeping changes Airtel aimed to bring toward enriching the lives of its customers and symbolized the brand’s virtues of progress and prosperity.[5][6]
In 2022, Airtel engaged Berlin-based design agency MetaDesign to refresh the brand’s visual identity.[7] MetaDesign’s work involved doing away with the wordmark to bolster the strength and recognition of the Airtel symbol with renewed confidence, creating a brand language in which the symbol allows for new fields of dynamic expression.[8]
Meaning and Symbolism
At the 2010 launch, Bharti Airtel’s then-CEO Sanjay Kapoor explained that the new symbol was an interpretation of the “A” in Airtel and showed the company’s willingness to embrace anything new. He described it as looking like a living object that represents the dynamic force in people’s lives. The lowercase lettering was described as an attempt to show humility, which Kapoor called the core of the brand.[9]
The red color has remained an integral part of the brand across redesigns. At the 2010 launch, the company stated that red continued to represent the energy and dynamism that had made Airtel successful.[2] In the African market launch, the company described the red primary color as reflecting the warmth and vibrancy of the continent, qualities reflected in Airtel’s brand personality of being brave and bold, sensitive and empathetic.[10]
Typography and Design
As part of the 2022 refresh, MetaDesign worked with type foundry TipoType to adapt its typeface Mundial for the Indian market. From this collaboration, a custom typeface called Airtel Sans was created. MetaDesign described the contemporary, geometric shapes of the font family as reflecting the forward-looking optimism of the Airtel brand.[8]
The 2022 refresh also refined the color palette, introducing a new shade of Airtel Red to unify a previously disparate palette of colors across print, digital and in-store touchpoints.[8]
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