Level 3 Communications was an American multinational telecommunications and internet service provider headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, that operated a Tier 1 network.[1] The company was acquired by CenturyLink in 2017, and its brand identity was retired after the merger.[2]
Design and History
The most recognizable element of the Level 3 visual identity was a pair of three-dimensional red brackets or parentheses, which the company registered as a standalone trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The registration, issued in 2007, explicitly claims red as a feature of the mark and describes it as “a pair of three-dimensional red brackets or parentheses.”[3] Level 3’s own press materials referred to these as “the red 3D brackets” and listed them alongside the company name and logo as registered service marks.[4]
The wordmark itself was registered in several forms. An early registration from 2002 covered the mark “LEVEL(3) COMMUNICATIONS.”[5] A later filing, made in September 2011 and registered in 2017, described the mark as “Level (3)” with the word “Communications” underneath, in a stylized font with “Communications” on the second line.[6][7]
The 2011 filing coincided with a significant corporate event. When Level 3 completed its acquisition of Global Crossing in October 2011, the company announced it would continue using the Level 3 Communications name but would create a new brand identity that leveraged elements of both service providers.[8] The new wordmark format, with the numeral 3 set inside parentheses, was filed for trademark protection the month before the acquisition closed.[6]
Around the same period, designer Steven Gray created a rebrand design system for Level 3 that won the 2011 Peak Award for Corporate Identity from the Colorado American Marketing Association. Gray’s system used “stripe stacks” intended to evoke motion blur in an abstract way, symbolizing network speed and movement, and was written into Level 3’s Brand Guidelines document.[9]
Meaning and Symbolism
The red parentheses were used as a standalone graphic device in advertising. A 2003 campaign created by Union Editorial featured Level (3)’s “eponymous red parentheses, adapted from the company’s bracketed logo, as towering 3-D obelisks that hover in mid-air over cityscapes to reinforce Level (3)’s global presence in the telecommunications industry.”[10]
The company name itself was the subject of a European trademark dispute. When Level 3 sought to register the word mark LEVEL (3) in the European Union, an examiner initially refused on the grounds that the mark described a signal level measured at a transmission level point in a circuit. The Board of Appeal overturned that decision in 2014, finding that “LEVEL (3)” had at most a suggestive rather than a descriptive link to the telecommunications services covered.[11]
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