CEE stands for french ‘Compagnie des eaux et d'électricité d'Indochine' or, in English, ‘Water & Electricity Company of Indochina’. CEE held the concession of water for both Saigon & Cholon and was the largest of the three electricity suppliers in Cochinchina until the departure of the French.
Within the series of projects aiming to bring back the old Saigon brands to the modern world (including the rebranding project for Samasa Matches). As the company supplies fundamental things (water and electricity) for the lives, it seems to be appropriate to build a friendly image that makes the customers feel comfortable.
The old logotype "CEE" is very unique, recognizable, legible and readable. It seems to be quite familiar to citizens in Saigon/HCMC, so the project would rather keep it than build up a new concept. However, in order to make "a revolution" in the brand image to make it suite the modern world, the logotype is varied by elements in line art style which illustrated a pumping system and an electric diagram (which represents the two products of the company - water and electricity).
When talking about CEE, people often think about light blue and dark yellow because the two colors were often used at the substation around the city (light blue for the logotype, dark yellow for the substitation's walls). However, this color scheme made the brand image old and out-of-date.In the new design, only the light blue is kept to remain the stable and trustworthy look of the brand. However, the old dark yellow will be replaced with the dark tangerine in order to add more friendly and dynamic feelings to the brand image. This color will also make the brand identity more attractive and outstanding.
In term of typefaces, the new design use the combination of Nexa Bold and UTM Avo. White Nexa Bold has some common traits with the logotype (especially the "C" letter) that is appropriate for headlines, UTM Avo is a legible and readable typeface for paragraphs and other texts. It was also customized to create the 'extra' Vietnamese diacritical marks. This customized typeface can also be use flexibly with 4 basic font weights: Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic.
