ATLANTA, Ga. — UPS yesterday unveiled a “new look” that includes the first redesign in more than 40 years of the company’s famous “shield” logo.

UPS said the change reflects the significant broadening of capabilities that has occurred in recent years as the company expanded across the globe and introduced a portfolio of new supply chain services. The company will continue to use the colour brown for its operations, but the logo change includes the elimination of the package with a string bow atop the shield.

“UPS is a vastly different company today than most people realize,” said UPS Chairman and CEO Mike Eskew. “Today we are bringing our look up to speed with our capabilities.”

The most visible change to the UPS logo is the removal of the bow-tied parcel that appears atop the shield. Ironically, even though the small bow had become one of the most recognized features of the company’s logo, packages with string have not been accepted by UPS for several decades because the string can get caught in high-speed sorting machinery.

The logo now being replaced was designed in 1961 by Paul Rand, a renowned brand designer who also was responsible for the logos of IBM, ABC, Westinghouse and Yale University, among others.

“Package delivery is and will remain the foundation of our business at UPS,” Eskew said. “But as we expand our capabilities and broaden the solutions we bring to our customers, we felt it was the right time to make our logo reflect the company’s evolution.”

Based on the scale of the project, changing UPS’s visual identity may be one of the most significant corporate identity transformations ever.

The UPS brand is one of the most seen and recognized on the globe. During the course of a year, UPS delivers to every address in the U.S. and Canada and reaches customers in more than 200 countries. Eighty percent of the world’s population can be reached by UPS in 24 hours.

The logo appears on more than 88,000 vehicles, 257 large jet aircraft, 1,700 facilities around the world, 70,000 drop-off and retail access points, more than 1 million uniform pieces and more than 3 billion packages annually.

The visual changes will not be restricted to the logo alone. The phrase “Synchronizing the World of Commerce” will become part of the design of the company’s aircraft and familiar brown delivery vehicles. New advertising also will include the “synchronizing commerce” theme.

And while brown will remain the primary colour representing UPS, other new, complementary colours will become part of the design of aircraft, packages and other company assets.

The various changes follow more than a year of research and planning and were to have been unveiled with a worldwide series of events in more than 30 countries. Plans for that aggressive external publicity effort were shelved due to current world events, although presentations to UPS employees began today as planned.