AOL made a low key announcement on Sunday evening to provide details of how its image will change once it breaks free from its parent company Time Warner.

The full details will be unveiled on 10 December, when AOL common stock begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

However, V3.co.uk has been given an idea of the changes to come by AOL chief of staff Maureen Marquess.

The AOL logo will no longer be all upper case letters, and will become Aol followed by a full stop.

"We just liked the look of Aol. - it's visually interesting for the brand. Awareness of the brand is not the problem. We see the dot as a pivot point to show the depth and creativity of the brand," said Marquess.

"It is an important moment for the company as it spins out of Time Warner and brings world class content to consumers, which most people are just not currently aware of."

AOL web sites include branded examples such as AOL Money & Finance and AOL Entertainment, along with unbranded examples such as male-interest site Asylum, technology site Switched and hip-hop site Back Voices.

Although the AOL statement said that the company will focus on consumers, Marquess stressed that the identity of the brand is not set, leaving room for it to still target business users.

Marquess described the redefined strategy as a mix between "content, ads and communications", in a direction that sounds similar to Yahoo's.

"But our strategy is different to Yahoo's as 80 per cent of our content will be our own," she said. "We are hiring our own journalists because we want that level of consumer content. It is what consumers value."

Behind the new AOL logo will be changing backgrounds, ranging from a fish to a leaf and a couple kissing, to demonstrate the breadth of the firm's content.

AOL worked with Wolff Olins, a global brand and innovation consultancy, to develop the new identity.

AOL was born in the 1980s and was one of the first companies to offer a commercial internet service. When the browser developed and the World Wide Web formed in the 1990s, AOL was the leading internet service provider.

In 2000 AOL announced a merger with Time Warner. The deal was among the largest ever and is widely considered to mark the high point of the dotcom boom.

However, the deal turned out to be disastrous for AOL, and its market share rapidly declined along with its image. The firm has now just 5,000 employees after rounds of job cuts. Last week AOL said it would cut another third of its workforce when it becomes independent on 9 December.