STILL think copier when you hear the name Xerox?

T

he company knows that you do. And it is sick of it. After all, Xerox doesn’t even make standalone copiers anymore.

So on Monday, Xerox introduced what it says is the most sweeping transformation of its corporate identity since it dropped “Haloid” from the Haloid Xerox name in 1961. In a presentation to employees, it announced that it would retire the red capital X that has dominated its logo for 40 years in favor of what Richard Wergan, vice president for advertising, calls “a brand identity that reflects the Xerox of today.”

The Xerox/Interbrand team settled on lowercase letters because they seemed friendlier, and on a deeper red and a thicker font, to stand out better on the Web and on high-definition television. They chose a ball to suggest forward movement and “a holistic company,” Ms. Stump said.

They also devised a series of variously colored “connectors” — swirled lines, reminiscent of the ribbons used to connote support for research on AIDS and breast cancer — that Xerox will etch on conference rooms at its new headquarters in Norwalk, Conn., and that it will use to connect images and text in broadcast commercials and print advertisements.

Not everything about the logo is new. The research showed that people strongly associated Xerox with the color red, so that stayed. There was a bonus reason for keeping the color: Xerox sells heavily overseas, and “in the Asia/Pacific regions, the red resonates as good luck, prosperity and good will,” Ms. Stump said.

Note: I'm no decent writer; I got all this straight out of the NYT.