Alcatel-Lucent unveils purple ball

On its first day as a new entity, equipment giant Alcatel-Lucent today unveiled its new corporate logo--sorry, “visual identity.” And it’s purple.

The image, visible on the company’s new Web site, www.alcatel-lucent.com, is a purple sphere bearing a white, stylized combination of the letters A and L. The two letters are joined at both ends to resemble an infinity symbol, Alcatel-Lucent said in a statement issued today.

"Our new logo represents the endless possibilities for the future and our commitment to being a strong and enduring ally for our customers around the world," Patricia Russo, the company’s chief executive officer, said in the statement.

“[The logo] is both fluid and infinite,” the company said. The color is “bold … symbolizes ambition and is also associated with creativity, wisdom and dignity.”

A miniature purple ball is also being used in place of the hyphen in the name Alcatel-Lucent.

Gone is the widely recognized sloppy red circle Lucent Technologies adopted as its corporate logo in 1999, following its emancipation from AT&T. Known--to Lucent, at least--as the “innovation ring,” that logo (said to have been recommended to then-CEO Rich McGinn by then-Lucent executive Carly Fiorina, who went on to lead Hewlett Packard) was meant to convey "universality, knowledge and perfection,” the company said when it was introduced in 1999. “The energetic brush stroke style provides the sense of innovation and human energy upon which our company is based. The perfection of the symbol lies not in technical symmetry, but rather in perfectly capturing the spirit of our company in a single, masterful brush stroke.”

As the image of the world’s largest telecom equipment provider, Alcatel-Lucent’s purple ball will now take its place beside the blue ball that is the symbol of the country’s largest telecom service provider, AT&T.