IS THERE A RED DOT SALE? DStv Media Sales is the new name of Oracle Airtime Sales. But what a really UGLY new logo.

DStv Media Sales is the new name of Oracle Airtime Sales (OATS), the advertising sales arm of MultiChoice.

DStv Media Sales also has a new logo that sadly looks like an amateur mish-mash of clashing and repulsive colours, seems to incorporate every shape from a circle to an ellips (just not a block) thrown together, and a font addition (IN CAPS!) that doesn't make sense at all. Remember: new people or possible clients who see your logo don't know, remember (or frankly care) how you looked before, and how that infused the new logo.

The new DStv Media Sales logo that looks horrible to me, makes so many questions bubble to the surface: Where are you supposed to look? What first grabs your eye (and what should)? Why does this logo look like something that belongs on the side of an experimental satellite rocket South Africa tried to build in the 80's? And finally: Is there a red dot sale going on somewhere I don't know about?

In place of the graceful Oracle Airtime Sales logo that was evocative of an eye (symbolically in keeping with viewing things, because this is television) there is a massive red dot. Yes. Just like the Japanese flag. Why keep this bit out of the old logo and make it the most prominent element because of its size and colour but then position and misuse it so that it seem like the very part that least belongs in the new logo? I'm not an iconographer but I can tell you the colour of the ellips - now turquiose - should be the same colour as whatever its symbolically encapsulating. Sadly the ellips is not the colour of the dot or of the ''writing''. The whole shebangle literally screams in colour terms. And its not a good scream.

It's hard to fathom what DStv Media Sales actually wants the new logo to say. What does the logo communicate visually and non-verbally in a symbolic sense? Sadly in my opinion, very little. It looks to me like one akward Russian company merged with another and were forced to come up with something of each that makes very little sense. Like the hybrid creatures on the island of Doctor Moreau.

The ALL CAPS doesn't exude understated confidence (which is what you'd rather want to portray if you're in sales and want to make a great first impression) but conveys in-your-face jimble-jamble. Positioned so close to the beautiful futuristic liqui sans serif font of the word ''DStv'', it gives an overall clashing impression. The sets of type just don't fit. Your eyes unconsciously tell you the D's and the S's in the logo don't look the same - that something is ''wrong''. It comes across as unrefined.

In my opinion DStv Media Sales should relook their new logo, definitely simplify the colour scheme, go for a more unitone palette, and drop or do something different with that little bit of Tokyo. DStv Media Sales represents quality and premium brands who live and breathe in the very visual videosphere. Their logo (in our hyper visual world) should reflect that.