Controversy is raging over tenders for the South African Airways corporate identity design. Neil Bierbaum reports
A CALL for tenders by South African Airways (SAA) for the redesign of its corporate identity has been slammed as a front by applicants who fear that the appointment might have already been made.
In the scramble to pitch, major overseas design firms have suddenly formed partnerships, one with a local black-owned advertising agency, another with a local interior designer. However the extent of their commitment has been questioned. One international design house allegedly made tentative offers of employment to South African designers on the condition that the consortium it had joined won the account.
The sudden presence of international design houses in advance of an advertisement in a local daily newspaper calling for tenders has raised suspicion that these design houses were approached by SAA and asked to tender.
The advertisement makes it clear that only a local company may submit an application, that this company should have a “personnel complement that is truly representative of this country up to the highest level”and that the company should have international links.
Given the dearth of suitable candidates in South Africa, there was a sudden rush to form alliances. New York design firm Diefenbach Alken has tied in with local black-owned agency Herdbuoys, and little known design studio The Design Unit.
Diefenbach Alken has done work for Kodak and Air Canada, among others. According to Herdbuoys managing director Peter Vundla, the alliance with Diefenbach Alken was “not at all”done specifically for the SAA pitch.
He says his agency is “positioning corporations for the future and design is one element of that. There are other state-owned assets that are undergoing identity changes. It was more than just the SAA thing. We are a full service agency; we have done design work for NNTV and for Nedlac. We have also done pack and label design.”
Asked whether Herdbuoys will have to appoint new staff, Vundla said that “it will be a joint effort; they will work out of here with
London-based design house Landor Associates, which has designed corporate identities for a large number of the world’s airlines — most recently Cathay Pacific — has allegedly formed a partnership with a local interior designer Trevor Julius. Julius would not comment when asked whether this was true.
A spokesperson from Landor in London promised to return the Mail & Guardian’s call but failed to do so.
The SAA advertisement stated that the appointment would be made on Tuesday this week, after submissions were due to be in on the preceding Friday. This lack of consultation fuelled speculation that the appointment had already been made as a period of consultation with short-listed applicants was expected.
However, when contacted on Tuesday SAA spokesperson Hennie Stoman said that interviews would be held and an announcement made early next week. “The whole process will be as transparent as possible,”he said. “We will have outside people sitting in on the committee decision. We are not being prescriptive. We are looking for the company that is best equipped to do the job.”
Asked whether the account would be more likely to go to a South African design company or a South African black company, Stoman responded that the “advertisement asked tenders to state what sort of environment they had been operating in the last year to see if they (SAA) are dealing with a design company”.