I don’t intend to write anymore about Google Analytics for the time being, sorry if my post gave that impression

Thank you for your Internet post.

The old version of GA’s city map showed city locations as much smaller orange dots.

The newer (2012) version uses huge dots…e.g. 4 visits to a city in the U.S. shows up as an orange dot that almost covers half the U.S.

Is there any way to revert back to the old visualization using smaller dots?

You post says there would be more on this, but I can’t find it. Perhaps I missed it.

Thanks,

Nick

I don’t understand the need to completely overhaul the service instead of making little tweaks. The visitor overview is quite impressive and real time will be useful. It’s a shame but I guess I’m stuck using this service.

Just stumbled across your page looking for pictures. Nice job!

Derp Derp Derp. This is in fact a total rebranding of all Telstras style guides, not just a once-off campaign. brand.telstra.com if you don’t believe me, but hey, what would I know, I’m just the guy animating the digital POS.
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To answer your question, “For example, the cool colours could be used across pre-paid and personal services while the warmer colours for business and government items. I haven’t seen any correlation yet so it seems it’s just flair for the time being.”, Telstra has advised us that there is no real correlation between the colours and the division that it’s relating to. In their words, it’s all about the “feeling”… So we choose colours depending on how many cups of coffee or cigarettes I have or haven’t had that morning.
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The new branding is pretty cool in my opinion! Animating the colour wheels as they spin sucks the fat one though, and their departments (especially the Dealer arm) have little to no idea what’s going on with it. But it’s a good direction for them, it brings them out of the 1990′s/2000′s and into the 10′s well I think.

And I wish I’d taken a photo of the posters they’d had at Roma st station, when they had all the posters up on the platforms. Their ad for television on demand was “Get new Dexter now. Chop chop.” on whatever colour they’re using for their TV services. I thought it was kind of funny, but a little try hard.

I don’t agree that this is an ad campaign. An ad campaign tends to be shorter in lifespan whereas this appears to be a more permanent change on Telstra’s part. The fact that they didn’t change their logo doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t rebranded – or at the very least adjusted their brand. The fact that they released this video explaining how they’re going in a new direction and ‘changing the way [they] look and sound’ seems to back this up. I don’t believe an ad campaign would include an explanation video as the purpose of an ad campaign is to provide a clear and consise as possible message to the public – in which case an explanation video would not only be unnecessary, but actively discouraged.

Many of the smaller elements of the brand have also changed that indicate a rebranding. These include bill statements, SIM cards and packaging. A rebrand aims to reposition a brand which I believe they have done here to attract a new audience.

Finally, if this wasn’t a rebrand and so many outlets of the design community said it was, I believe Interbrand would have come out and said something. They have a blog post about their work for Telstra in which they say “We’ve helped Telstra evolve its brand identity as part of the biggest change to the company since its transition from Telecom in 1993″ and then further down in the article link to 3 articles that mention ‘new brand positioning’, ‘brand refresh’ and ‘brand evolution’.

I don’t believe that so many people and respected design sources would have called this a rebrand if it wasn’t the case.

It is a campaign idea executed through design. The fact that the media keeps calling it a rebrand is seriously worrying. If the industry does not understand branding, we are in trouble. Branding i smooch more than the logo, but by keeping the old logo tells me that they have not changed at all. They have just put a colourful bandaid over the top – i am sure I am not the only one thinking this.

Their webpage seems significantly cleaner and faster than when I was a customer (5+ years ago) so that’s a big plus to them too. The cleaner designs definitely help with this but (bringing this comment back to the focus of your article) also make the site far less daunting to use than it previously was.

I agree that the ad wasn’t the best but all in all this was a definite improvement to the look and feel of their brand.