Sea wants to conquer S.E.A.
Founded in 2009 as Garena Interactive Holding Limited, Sea Limited ("Sea") is the company’s new brand at the corporate holding company level to reflect its leadership across multiple platforms.
“Garena is a brand that is beloved across our game ecosystem, our Shopee brand has become synonymous with e-commerce in our region, and AirPay is quickly becoming a leader in digital financial services,” said Sea Founder, Chairman, and Group CEO Forrest Li. “We cherish these three brands, and are now embracing an overall identity for our entire company.”
- Sea Press Release, 8/5/2017
The dragon's not dead
In short, Sea is now the parent name of the 3 companies (Garena, Shopee and AirPay), replacing Garena. The move is similar to the Alphabet-Google announcement in 2015.
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| Old Logo vs New Logo |
This means that the Garena logo will still be in use, and Garena would only be focused on digital entertainment from now on. I really like the Garena "G", because it has that oriental feel in the strokes, making it resemble a dragon.
I understand why there is a need for a name change. People recognise Garena as a gaming company, not a group consisting of a shopping and payment app. By naming the parent company Sea, it is also clear where their interests lie: Greater Southeast Asia.
The Sea logo
The new Sea logo consists of the icon, company name and the slogan, one which is a more ambitious than Garena's. There are 6 colours used for the icon, which I assume paints an abstract picture of Southeast Asia. 3 shades of blue to remind us that we are made up of many islands and LOTS of water.
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| Colours used for the logo |
Waves
The waves on the logo are probably the most exciting part of the logo, mainly because there are so many of them which gives the logo its energy. However, the green part looks out of place because of the strong colour contrast between green and cyan/green and orange.
I was pleased to find the sea logo in Adobe Illustrator format under media resources (usually, I have to steal the logos from news sites, etc). When I opened the file, I was treated to an easter egg of sorts.
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| The power of clipping masks |
Turns out that the curves all come from the same wave base!
Fonts
Using a rounded, clean font for "sea" fits harmoniously with the icon. On the downside, it makes the logo look like one for a kids company. Something about those rounded edges just remind me of...
Luckily, the slogan's font is more professional, so I would think twice before guessing that this is a company making stuff for kids.
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| 1st result when you search for "kindergarten alphabet poster" (Source) |
Conclusion
Give this logo some time before it is accepted by the community. Heck, not many people will get to see this often, because they will be seeing the logos of the group's portfolio companies (Garena. Shopee, AirPay). Sea's logo might not be as visually impactful as Garena's, but it passes the test of being a decent one.
I give Sea's new logo a(n)
CONVERSATION