“0900” was a new marketing project by the MTN Irancell telecommunication company. They wanted to introduce a new SIM card with a new area code for their users. The idea was, in fact, to target the young and wealthy people fascinated by simple round phone numbers. The client needed everything in a short time, from visual identity to an advertising campaign.
We wanted to keep the idea simple and easy to understand. So we worked on the form of “0900” itself, which was the only thing we had at the time. We simplified the shape of the numbers and formed a row of four identical circles except one that was sitting in the place of 9. It was placed higher than the baseline of the other three and had other visual attributes (different volume, colour, and texture). The idea was to suggest that in a group of people, there is always someone different, and that person could be our target audience; the one who wants to be special, the one who has a special phone number, the one who holds a 0900 SIM card. Then after many ups and downs, the tagline “You are special.” was registered to support the conceptual side of the identity design.
We knew that the visual was still very raw and simple. So we decided to focus on that special circle and created more versions of it in different styles. Doing so made a dynamic visual identity design without even knowing that. The form found the way by itself. We created many versions of the original logo in different colours and chose the proper mediums to present them. We set up an advertising campaign in which we introduced the brand step by step using billboards, Instagram posts, and TV commercials. During the two commercials shown consecutively, the visuals found a chance to escape from the graphic shapes and become more descriptive. That special circle was translated into the various images of objects across the videos. Those images were carefully chosen to represent positive vibes for youngsters. Food, travel, sports, science, and wellness are some topics we liked to attribute to our audience.
GIFT
SIMCARDS
We also designed other products like the actual SIM cards and their packages with the same dynamic design strategy to let the users choose from a wide range of colours and experience a better sense of being special. The project turned out to be an interactive campaign when we received a lot of Instagram stories from our followers who had photographed similar compositions to the logo and shared them with the tagline “You are special.” It was an enormous reward to see how normal people can engage with our work.
Client: MTN Irancell
Design: Davood Morgan, Farid Yahaghi, Javad Zarinia
Research Director: Mahmood Torabian
Colleague: Shima Pirayesh
Photography: Adeleh Esmaeili