The Trademark in 1970

The previous situation
After the 1953 competition, the "Six-legged dog" trademark was used by Eni to "personalize" all its activities: from its area stations (designed by the architect Baciocchi) to the furnishings and fittings of the Agip Motels, and from company publicity to its buildings.
Lacking any coordination, it appeared in diversified forms, following the natural instinct of Eni's first President, Enrico Mattei, a great communicator.
"But at a certain point the need was felt to put things a bit in order.
Above all to separate the services for cars from those for people. Otherwise there was the risk that everything would smell of gasoline", to cite the amused comment of Bob Noorda, the author of two restylings of the Six-legged Dog, first in 1972 and then in 1998.
 
1972, modern times
To create a trademark properly so termed and to develop a coordinated Group image, the Unimark agency was contacted. Bob Noorda was commissioned to study a communication project for the network of area stations for distributing Agip fuels.
It was immediately apparent from a first check of the "recognizability" of the image that it was best to study a "restructuring" operation rather than rethinking the symbol from scratch: although the name "Agip" had not yet achieved widespread popularity, the "Six-legged dog" was deeply rooted in the Italian collective mind of those years.
But the dog with six legs, until then "free" against the most varied backgrounds in publicity images, used indiscriminately according to the fantasy of the managers of the network of gasoline distribution plants, had to be turned into a "trademark". It needed precise coloring and a fixed background able to make its publicity applications easier and to make it immediately recognizable.
Service areas use supporting poles for signs more or less rectangular in shape as their distinctive element: the new trademark therefore had to have a shape making it easier to be inserted in these signs.  

Unimark's solution (called "palina") was a yellow square with chamfered corners serving as backdrop to the famous Six-legged dog. "The Six-legged dog was a bit too long to fit into the ‘palina'. It had to be shortened a bit and its inclination corrected from 7 to 5 degrees. To get an immediate idea of the effect, I cut the dog into two with scissors and partly overlapped the two halves.
A homemade test typical of the past; today it would be done in a different way". Noorda redesigned Broggini's dog and made it somewhat more modern: the crests were made less accentuated so as to lessen the suggestion of chimeras and Germanic gryphons, and the eye was rounded and made bigger. Not such a fierce dog, a friendlier one. But the most important change concerned the institutional typographic character used for the wording.

The original wording was with tall, narrow characters, not very original and hard to read especially at a distance, a weak sign absolutely put in the shade by the Six-legged dog.
The company's new characters were redesigned by Unimark using the classical Standard Bold, but distinguished by the insertion of a white central rule. "The white rule makes the character dynamic, winding from one letter to the next creating a considerable continuity, especially in the longer words.
The symbol it was wished to evoke was that of the road, with the two lanes separated by the white dividing line. What more precise connection could be created with a company whose plants are located along roads and which provides services for those using the roads?".
The new image was immediately adopted by all the Group companies.
This achieved a strong grouping effect: the corporate identity of American type, anticipated by Mattei's pioneering action, was finally fulfilled also at the level of the image.
In the logo there was also the first use of the new corporate character: apart from the shorter dog inserted in the yellow "palina", there was the company's style, written as a proper name starting with a capital letter.
"Even the shape of the logo recalls the form of the Six-legged dog, and the red dot of the i in Agip evokes the flame". An important change showing that the acronym took a back seat, to the advantage of a name: recognition of the corporate identity by the public was also improved.

The trademark is constructed on a grid formed by 25 base squares and 25 vertical squares.
The construction using a grid was used in all cases of great enlargement of the trademark

Corporate type-face.
This type-face, which is called Standard Bold, has been customized for visual impact, with some of the characters having to be adapted accordingly.
Each character has a white, central rule.
The corporate type-face is to be used for all product or service logos.
The trademark is constructed on a grid formed by 25 base squares and 25 vertical squares.
The construction using a grid was used in all cases of great enlargement of the trademark