Sensata logo – good or bad?
Do you think this logo for Sensata is effective?
Story in brief
For three billion dollars, Bain Capital bought the Sensors & Controls business (essentially the ‘instruments’ piece) of Texas Instruments, to create a more focused global leader in this industrial (with a tech edge) category.
Landor’s namers played with every possible outgrowth of ‘sensor’ and its Latin root ‘sensus’, feeling / sense. They found “Sensata,” original and just odd enough to be available. The word Technologies was tacked on to reinforce diversity and more importantly, to add some hardness to an otherwise soft, even feminine-sounding name.
The design solution is simply s-e-n-s-a-t-a, written in Braille, punched up with colours to suggest diversity of markets and applications.
According to designer Nicolas Aparicio, Braille has relevance in suggesting a passion to resolve customer problems and the cool-gray-to-hot-red color flow suggests “giving life to machines.” (Process trivia: the Landor team never met their clients in person. Interviews, reviews of name lists, design presentations… all via conference call.)
Landor provided a more vertical version too, where it’s the symbol that gets small while the name pops.
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24 appreciated comments on “Sensata logo – good or bad?”
What are your thoughts?
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I like the use of braille, has kind of a dippin’ dots feel to it.
Is this a good logo? Well aesthetically I think its rather sexy myself – love the palette and the scientific / medical connotations the logo congers up.
In terms of the logo placed in context to the company’s branding / visual identity (key to seeing the full picture), I could not pass further judgment without seeing more materials. Only then can you see just how ‘good’ it really is and how well it ‘works’.
Certainly looks nice on the surface though.
This could be the logo for a Epidermis Pharma medicine or a Sensors & Controls technology company: I don’t think the logo makes apparent, in any way, what the company does. However, there may be a huge group of educated business people who will instantly understand the Latin root “sensus” in Sensata while simultaneously recongnizing the icon as braille, which actually requires one of your senses to read. Lastly, Sensata doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? I do like the color usage in the icon, though the midtone gray in the logotype reflects the same non-stylistic values of pharma packaging.
i think it’s crap, as a logo. It looks nice, but to me, a good logo, is something a 10 year old, can draw from memory
I completely agree with you, ming, about it lacking describability.
A good logo is something you can give an accurate picture of when talking to someone on the telephone.
*I almost typed “something you can give an accurate picture of to a blind person”, but I think that’s very possible with this logo.
I agree with Blairo, i think the logo is sexy, i totally disagree with ming, stop by logopond and take a look in the gallery i think you would be hard pressed not to find a logo that not only works but is slightly above a 10 year olds memory gauge.
I also don’t believe you have to meet with a client in person to get a very good and workable idea of what they want or be able to correctly convey something graphically, its not like they have a sketch book out and drawing on napkins, and if they are they could snail mail or email a scan of any of that.
I work remotely and while in some cases its hard, in most its really not.
David B, I too work remotely and agree that it’s not necessary for face-to-face meetings to achieve excellent results.
To view the logo in context I tried in vain to find marketing material online but if you look at the Sensata website – http://www.sensata.com/ – you can at least see it as they’d like you to see it. It kind of gets lost amongst all the images and links.
Thanks for posting.
That website is clearly Klixons’, isn’t it?
Blip, as far as I’m aware from the website Sensata is a manufacturer of Klixon.
David, I should be punished for my atempt at wit. What I actually meant is that the logo that stands out from the mess is Klixon, not Sensata.
I like the concept of the logo, the braille, I just think it doesn’t work.
I think its great. The quasi color spectrum dot thing is really nice, but I agree with that Funk fella in that I am not sure what the logo conveys about the company. But the design is sweet.
After looking at the Sensata web site I dislike the logo even more, though admittedly because of the application on their home page rather than design. You would think that the designer would have taken into account that when the logo is placed how the name would come to look like an afterthought when paired with the icon. Maybe i wouldn’t feel this way if they had used the version with “Sensata” justified beneath the icon…It’s puzzling to me that with the logo looking so forced and so secondary on the page that somebody didn’t speak up. I know any of my nit-picking clients would have.
The only version I like is the third (below the gray scale version) The others put too much emphasis on the icon.
That website sucks is big way. The logo is completely lost. I would have adapted the colours in the icon as my palette and launched from there. To be honest, I didn’t even notice the Klixon logo, until
metioned here in a comment and I went back to look for it.
I like the Sensata name and image, it has a latin feel and the dots have a nice rythmic techy feel. (now knowing it’s braille) makes me ask if printed versions have it embossed. If so, what a clever inclusive effort for the sightless. Good branding if one of their values is sensitivity. I think I’ll stop reading into this too deeply.
I like it.
Sorry I’m late to the conversation.
I agree with a few comments already offered: the logo is lost on their web-page and I like the one on the bottom right the best.
I never would have gotten the braille reference. Without knowing anything about this company, my first guess is they are a computing company of some sort – the first thought I had on the dots were some Matrix kinda thing. The colors didn’t mean anything to me.
There’s some interesting comments here about how the logo looks nice, but is meaningless (my read on what some have said). I think that’s an unfortunate tendency of a number of design firms…being so cleaver and artistic they outsmart themselves and their audience. The result is something that’s artistically cool, but lacks meaning to the very people it’s intended to serve.
Hey Jim,
It’s never too late to join in. Thanks for your contribution. Your last sentence in particular rings true with me.
It can look nice but miss the mark.
This is one of the most brilliantly design marks of recent history. Totally original. If it was not this way people like you and I would not be arguing over if it is good or not.
Tony Spaeth did a amazing review of this mark.
http://www.identityworks.com/reviews/2006/sensata.htm
Ah, very nice. I like both the look and meaning of the logo, though I’m not sure how much it conveys to someone who doesn’t know it’s Braille. And I agree with Ed that it would be cool if the printed logo were embossed.
2/10
I would never have understood that it was braille.
I cant describe it.
A 3 year old cant draw it.
The logotype itself is a boring, not distinctive and doesn’t sit well with the dots.
It wont last. I give it 2 years at best before its totally redesigned.
Ming, you are right.
It’s…all right I guess. I’m sure they could’ve done better. A logo does have to be different though, so in that sense they succeeded. As far as something that would make want to look at it, no.
Why Braille? Blind people wont be able to see it, and most people don’t know that it is braille unless they’ve been told.
I thinks it’s all over the place.. the type and dots should be integrated, at least. To the naked eye it’s just a serial of colorful dots with subtitles.. It’s pretty yes, but i think that’s just about it.
I agree, Vanessa. It may be aesthetically pleasing, nice colours and all, but it’s not memorable enough to work.
I like it a lot.
This is a large company that simply paid someone who knew little about it to design for them and it shows. After you give reasons for the design it makes sense but not until then. But plain and simple, if you need to explain the thoughts behind a logo and what you were trying to make people think of, they are way off mark. To much money thrown around and not enough thought to it by those in the company. No offense to the designer, I am sure he worked hard with what they were given but that is what it portrays to me, spend money and pay little attention to what it has accomplished.
I think is looks very nice, it is clean and engaing. It does not however satisfy my criteria for what a good logo is. It is not particularly memorable, the Grotesque San-serif, I’m assuming Helvet’ or Swiss, used makes it underwhelming and seems to be an unispired solution–when it doubt play it safe, right? Don’t think it works here. and the brail is not appropriate and dose not clarify but distracts from the fact that this “Logo” has no soul what so ever, but looks nice.