New O opens up for Opera

Opera is that web browser that by all accounts is great, but hardly used by any significant number of people. But it has been on the market since 1995 and is under continuing development. Yesterday, it launched a new visual identity, developed by London-based DixonBaxi.

Ever since its creation, Opera's icon has been the letter O taken from a serif typeface. The new version is more abstract, taking the form of a "gateway" that leads to new experiences.

Correction September 28: DixonBaxi only did the branding and creative strategy for this project, the visual identity was created by Anti.

Previous icon.

Old corporate logo.

From a DixonBaxi press release:

For the last 12 months DixonBaxi have been working with Opera, the web browser and mobile technology business that has 350 million users worldwide, to redefine their brand proposition, brand strategy and architecture.

With 20 years at the forefront of web browsers and now mobile connectivity, Smart TV navigation and mobile advertising, they were in need of a new strategy to rationalise the many strands of the business and pull it together under a single proposition.

DixonBaxi completed a 4 month research and insight gathering audit before going back to the internal brand team with key insights and directional thinking which provided the foundations for the final strategy.

Simon Dixon; “With Opera positioned as an inventive and wide reaching business of great effect, but low on the publics radar, we felt the key was to create a strategy that was more consumer driven. A rally cry to be more active, inclusive and focused on the great things Opera liberate people to do. The strategy is - Do More. Opera allows people to get more of what the need, more out of their time and through powerful compression tools, more out of life.”

Sean D’Arcy, VP of Global Marketing commented; “We engaged DixonBaxi to build a new brand and creative strategy for Opera at the start of 2014. It’s been a complex task, but they brought a lot of pragmatism and skill to the job. In the face of a complex, fast changing business and landscape, they got their heads around the problem by diving in to the business, gathering insight all over the world, in all our operations, then came back with a blindingly simple and on-brand proposition and brand architecture. Now that we have sharpened what we stand for, we can connect way more effectively with our audiences.”

A new identity will be unveiled this week for their flagship product Opera Mini.

Some process pictures:









Opera