BT reallocates design budget…

BT is undertaking its most wide-reaching roster overhaul to date, during the same week it begins introducing a visually refreshed version of its brand.

Only eight of the 19 consultancies on the telecom giant’s design for print roster are to be retained, following a review which sees corporate communications and information design dropped from the roster’s remit.

The revised roster will now focus strictly on marketing communications, within which the Internet is seen as crucial.

New rosters for BT’s information and branding work will be created later this year, in a bid to harness greater unity from the 150 suppliers providing ad hoc design services. The multimedia roster will be reviewed next.

Johnson Banks, Lambie Nairn, Trickett & Webb, Real Time Studio, Information Design Unit, PB, Mattessons, and ADP have been dropped from the design for print roster. Some may appear on the new information design or corporate communications rosters.

BT head of design David Mercer says that while the total company spend on design will not change, the proportion of the budget spent on new media will be pushed upwards.

The changes effectively mean a shift away from print design.

Subject to contracts being signed this week, the 12 new consultancies joining the design for print roster are: BCG Communications, Light & Coley, Manley Communications, Bostock and Pollitt, Dawson Meadows, EH6, BCLO, Chandler Gooding, Mahoney Associates, Premm Design Associates, The Turquoise Consultancy, and Whitedoor.

Coley Porter Bell, Design House and Stocks Austin Sice have been retained from the previous roster, along with DMLFF, H&P Graphics, Harlequin Design Consultants, Westhill Communications and Unigraph.

“We have very different requirements now to what we had three years ago… the kind of work we expect our consultancies to do is much broader than it has been in the past,” says Mercer.

Meanwhile, BT has unveiled a refreshed logo developed by Enterprise IG. A “more modern” typeface is likely to be approved by the BT board this month, without the traditional red and blue colouring. Mercer says the current logo will not be altered dramatically.

“The main focus of the refresh is to move the company away from being a ‘telco’ to being a complete communications company, given that so much of our work is now data communications,” says Mercer.