By Cathy Ciccolella
Senior Editor

RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif.—Vision Service Plan (VSP) is giving its corporate logo a facelift this summer, replacing the all-caps, blue-and-black logo it has used for the past decade with a new, contemporary design that spells out “vsp” in lower-case letters.

VSP’s new logo and slogan go onto the company’s marketing materials later this summer.

The company’s previous logo had been in use for roughly the past 10 years.

The managed-vision giant also has a brand-new company slogan: “Vision care for life.” Those words replace the previous VSP slogan, “Passion for people. Vision for life.”

The company is officially unveiling the new logo and slogan at this month’s Optometry Meeting in Boston, although eyecare professionals on its provider panel were notified of the update in mid-June. The new brand identification will begin rolling out on VSP’s marketing materials and other communications in late summer; they debuted on the VSP Web site earlier this month.

Why the change? “We made a decision to evolve our brand,” explained Don Yee, VSP’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate development and chief executive officer of the VSP family of companies. “We needed to express who we are in a new, more contemporary and accessible way.”

Yee told VM the decision to change the logo and slogan was a couple of years in the making, following research into consumers’ eyecare needs via focus groups, surveys and interviews with some of VSP’s 51 million members.

He stressed that while Vision Service Plan remains the company’s corporate name, “VSP is the external representation of that.” Added Yee, “We’re not changing the company basics—we’re building on the foundation we already offer to our members: great service, individual attention and personal care by private-practice doctors.”

Yee said the new logo and slogan provide “more emotional connection, and are more accessible. The new lower-case logo is a less institutional look—it’s very much a ‘consumer’ logo.”

As for the slogan “Vision care for life,” he told VM, “It’s simpler, but it expresses a lot about VSP—it reinforces our commitment to providing terrific, personalized vision care for life.”