Brandient created the brand Fonomat for GED Capital investment fund.
Bucharest, February 2008
Starting with 2007, GED Capital acquired several regional dealer networks, such as Dasimpex and Plus GSM. This move consequently led to the emergence of Orange’s most significant business partner and, at the same time, it created the second biggest retailer in mobile telephony at a national level, in terms of location, in Romania. Brandient was commissioned by GED Capital to provide expertise and to create a brand capable of sustaining the new challenges of the business.
Fonomat is a complex project in terms of objectives, it is about setting up a retail business, a dealership business and a technology business, all at the same time. From a branding perspective, the big question is how to mix these requirements in a single concept and make this concept a vital support for the future of the business?
—Aneta Bogdan, Managing Partner, Brandient
The name Fonomat™ was created in order to memorably convey the idea of a ‘Bancomat’ (Romanian for ATM cash withdrawal machines) for modern telephony solutions. Fonomat has the versatility allowing it to become the obvious choice for accomplishing this goal.
The graphic identity applies the same principle and uses a symbolic stamp to spread the message: “solved and guaranteed”. The dominant color, magenta, provides differentiation and visibility within the constraints of the dealership status.
The Fonomat promise is the ultimate fan club for mobile telephony services, a place where one enters as a customer and leaves as a loyal fan™.
Brandient designers Cristian Petre, Partner and Alin Tamasan, Senior Designer have created the graphic identity of the new brand.
About Brandient
Brandient is an independent brand strategy and design consultancy founded in Bucharest in 2002 by Aneta Bogdan, Cristian Kit Paul and Mihai Bogdan — never part of a global network, working directly for the owners, CEOs and boards of its clients, with an all-senior team and category exclusivity. In over two decades the firm has created or rebuilt more than 300 brands, 279 of them published as case studies at brandient.com/work — from Romania’s national leaders to brands carried worldwide. The firm has been active in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. The work has earned 84 international awards and distinctions — most recently a Red Dot (2025) and two Graphis Golds (2026) — 64 documented mentions in international design books and publications, and, in 2015, a place among the inaugural inductees of the REBRAND Hall of Fame, alongside Interbrand and MetaDesign.
About Fonomat
Fonomat was the mobile-retail chain assembled by the private-equity fund GED Capital from four Romanian phone dealers — under the Brandient-created brand it grew into the country’s largest Orange dealer, with around 175 stores at its 2008 peak. It switched to Vodafone in 2010, and in 2012 the stores were reabsorbed by the operator; the chain ceased as an independent business: the Fonomat case.