Embarq was the brand created for the local telephone division spun off from Sprint Nextel in 2006. The company operated independently for just over three years before being acquired by CenturyTel in 2009, at which point the combined entity adopted the CenturyLink name and the Embarq identity was retired.
Design and History
Sprint Nextel announced the Embarq name and logo in late January 2006, ahead of the spinoff that was completed in the second quarter of that year. The name and visual identity were developed by SALT Branding, a San Francisco-based branding consultancy, which created the name, brand platform and visual language design system for the new company. [1] [2]
The logo consisted of the company name in capital letters set beneath a green symbol. Contemporary press described the mark as depicting three sharp-angled, connected green triangles meant to represent a jet. [3] [1] Later coverage more commonly described the angular symbol as resembling a paper airplane. [4] [5]
At the announcement, Daniel Hesse, who was to lead the spinoff, said the name and logo were meant to signal how the company would do business and establish what a next-generation local communications company could be. [6] The name itself was a stylized play on the word “embark,” and the company filed trademark applications for the mark with a pseudo-mark of “EMBARK.” [7]
The Embarq brand had a short lifespan. In June 2009, CenturyTel and Embarq announced that their combined company would be called CenturyLink, with a new logo developed with the help of Monigle Associates, a Denver-based brand consulting agency. [8] The acquisition was completed on July 1, 2009, and the CenturyTel and Embarq brandings were retired in October 2009, when all business began operating under the CenturyLink banner. [9]
Meaning and Symbolism
The green color was a deliberate point of differentiation. Sprint Nextel described the logo’s “distinctive and differentiating coloration” as part of the brand customers were meant to remember. [6] The trademark registration for the mark claims green as a feature of the mark, describing the design as having outer edges in light green and the middle in dark green. [7]
The jet or paper airplane motif was widely read as a symbol of forward motion and flight, an interpretation reinforced by the company’s own launch narrative. The visual identity used green and white as its brand colors, with a clean, geometric brand language. [4]
Typography and Design
The Embarq wordmark used capital letters set beneath the symbol. [1] The overall brand language was described as clean and geometric, consistent with the angular paper airplane mark. [4] No specific typeface has been publicly documented for the wordmark.
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