New logo: Australian Associated Press

Australia's national news agency, the Australian Associated Press (AAP), announced a new corporate identity last week, on May 24. The new symbol is "a stylised ribbon that represents the 24/7 flow of breaking news for which AAP is renowned". Melbourne agency Charles Elena Design designed the new branding, while Tempo Partners get a consultant credit.

The rebranding is part of streamlining of AAP's many product brands, and involved giving many of them new names. The different divisions now all use the symbol, but with colour coding that allows them to be easily identified.

AAP says rebranding is the "largest overhaul of the existing corporate image in nearly 25 years". It should be fully implemented in June.
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New logo: Associated Press

Yesterday, February 23, the Associated Press (usually known as the AP) unveiled a new visual identity, its first logo change in 30 years. The new identity system was developed with the New York agency Objective Subject.

It keeps the two letters that signify the news agency at the center. To allow continuity with the previous mark, the new letters have some stencil characteristics, and the red color is kept in form of an underline, "just like it would underline an important fact".

The letters are always enclosed by a "container" in the form of a white square. In that sense, the image above is slightly misleading, as the square disappears against a white background.

The red line, which is referred to as the "prompt", can also be used as a separate element. Another new visual property is a series of "watermarks" - lines inspired by the AP letterforms that can be used as backgrounds and supporting graphics.
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New logo: SDA-ATS

The Swiss news agency SDA/ATS was founded in the late 19th century. The full names behind the abbreviations are Schweizerische Depeschenagentur in German, Agence Télégraphique Suisse in French and Agenzia telegrafica svizzera in Italian. Yesterday, June 22, SDA/ATS unveiled a new corporate identity. It had been created with Zurich design agency Lumina.

Previous logo.

The agency claims its previous logo was introduced in the 1970s, and that certainly sounds believable. Its distinct "retro look" was considered "old-fashioned and boring".

While the old logo combined the German and the French/Italian abbreviations into one wordmark, there will now be separate logos for the three national languages. The logos combine a lowercase wordmark (sda or ats), a red bar and a tagline which means "The News Source". The red bar is used as a link between the wordmark and the tagline, and reinforces the agency's "Swissness" by using the same red colour as the Swiss flag.

There are also new logos for different SDA/ATS divisions (news, sports, IT and sales).
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