Starbucks Chooses Siren Over Recognized Name

Okay, I realize I'm committing the cardinal sin of blogging by being oh, about 2 weeks or so late to the punch, but I was blissfully lying on a beach sipping piña coladas when the Starbucks news broke and am only now really getting back into the swing of things. Apologies dear readers on being so delayed on such big logo redesign news!

If you haven't yet heard, and I don't know how that's possible, Starbucks dramatically changed it's logo—cutting out the words 'Starbucks Coffee' and using just the image of the siren in Starbucks green. I posted a few years ago about Starbucks' logo evolution with a link to an AdFreak article showing and discussing the various changes in the logo. My original post was sparked by a news story about a conservative group getting upset over Starbucks using their original logo—which has a more scandalous version of the siren their latest logo focuses in on.

People tend to be rather divided on their opinion of Starbucks new logo. My initial reaction was 'Why did they do that? Most people don't even notice the siren.' Not to mention those that noticed it in the past, weren't so thrilled with it's legs (or fins) wide open message (hence the premise for the old post). There was some email bantering about among the creatives at my agency when the news broke and amid the overall dislike of the logo, there were two main points that I agree with.

First, to many consumers, the name Starbucks and its typography in the green circle was as much, if not more so, the logo than the siren was. So eliminating the typography from the logo, while theoretically great for brand evolution, just doesn't seem to fit. The logo was developed internally at Starbucks, which could be some of the roadblock. I'm guessing the siren plays a much bigger part of their internal corporate identity than it does outside Starbucks' corporate walls. That's not to say the siren isn't identified with Starbucks identity, but it's just not was people remember and visualize when they think of the Starbucks logo in their head. Then again, maybe this decision was intended to change that perception.

Second, the siren by herself just doesn't hold her own. Okay, so Starbucks wanted an evolution of their logo for their 40th anniversary. They didn't want to go just Starbucks or Starbucks Coffee (the thought is this is because they plan to grow beyond coffee and continue to globalize—see the video below) so they went with the siren by herself. Some supporters of the logo point out that this is the epitome of a brand—when their identity can go completely visual with no type identifier. Think Apple or Nike. Starbucks kind of falls into that category, but not as well. It's not like people are not going to recognize the new mark, but it just doesn't have the same simplicity. The new logo should have an updated siren as well, especially considering the evolution of that part of the logo. Perhaps an updated siren with a simplification of the type (cut the words coffee?) for an eventual simplification to a logo only? Just a thought.

I don't think the new logo is going to hurt Starbucks. Indeed, I think most people have already forgotten about the redesign uproar, but I don't think it was quite the right move. It is rather uninspired and needs more simplification to really stand on it's own.

What do you think of the new Starbucks logo? Love it? Hate it?

*Also, check out this video from Starbucks introducing the new logo:

The B10

Awhile ago, I posted about the Big Ten's logo issue with adding a few more teams. Their old logo reflected the 11th edition with a nice, subtle 11 within the logo. Well, the new logo was unveiled and unfortunately, it's not nearly as sweet as the old logo's negative space 11.

Old logo

Apparently foreseeing that the number of teams in the Big Ten conference will continue to change over the years, the organization has simply reverted to a B10 reference within the logo. See the I in Big is really a one? And then the G is formed to look like a 0? It took me awhile to figure it out. I saw the 1 right away, but didn't catch the 0 until I saw the B10/BIG logo with the B in black. It doesn't really have the same purpose or point as the 11 did in the old logo, but oh well. It could've been worse.

The Gap's Brand Boomerang

Original Logo

New Logo

A little over a week ago the Gap suddenly announced a new logo. A very generic logo that boiled down their iconic brand to typeset Helvetica and a blue box. I wasn't a particular fan—my immediate reaction was why? Why do this to your simple, yet effective blue box? A simple Helvetica typeset only improves a logo if it was hideous or too busy to begin with—and that was simply not the case here. All it does is make it extremely generic.

I intended to post about it immediately, though a busy schedule both in and out of work prevented me from really having time to collect my thoughts about it. As luck would have it consumers on Twitter and Facebook ranted plenty for me and shockingly, the Gap did an about face last Tuesday, announcing that they were ditching their new logo in favor of the old one. Thank goodness.

Of course, that was after they ran a crowd sourcing campaign to design their new logo. Crowd sourcing is a cool idea, but maybe not the right approach for your core brand identity—you get a lot of crappy logos. Check out Brand New's post on it, they highlight some of the pieces. And if you scroll down, they'll give you a taste of exactly how generic that new Gap logo really was—by applying the same treatment to a number of other iconic brands. It made me laugh.

Kudos to Gap for swallowing their pride and relenting that what was probably months of hard work was misguided and hated by their target audience (assuming the whole thing was not a big publicity stunt as some have suggested). It really is an interesting study on the power of social media in today's consumer market. Everywhere from brands to politics, one false move can create an enormous wave of bad publicity and anger from the people you're trying to please.

Why, Y?

If you haven't already heard, the YMCA has officially embraced its nickname The Y (note the web address though). Maybe it's just me, but I don't love that idea as much as I think I should. It becomes less personable when it's the real name and not a generally accepted nickname. They could have just made it an official nickname or slogan or something and kept the official name. I mean future generations eventually won't know what the song YMCA is referring to! (kidding)
 

The naming aside, the Y also updated their logo. Interestingly enough, their new logo actually has YMCA in it (as well as a tacked on 'the') where the old logo was just a Y, which is partly how it got its nickname. So now that YMCA is no longer the official name, it's suddenly important enough to include in the logo? It's a little odd, don't you think?

Parts of the new logo are okay. Parts of it are not. As Brand New stated in their review,

The evolution is clear: From a hard-angled, tough-looking logo to a round-edged, soft-looking logo that plays well with the rest of the identities of the twenty-first century in pretty much all capacities. It is bubblier, it is lowercase, it has gradients, and it comes in various flavors. Unfortunately, all of the changes feel a tad gratuitous in the final execution.

In other words, it has a genericized early 21st century look to it. Notice the soft pillow gradients that were rather needlessly applied? They complement the rounded corners so well. (gag) Nothing against rounded corners, but that combo appears in 90% of all web icons and is far too generic and over-used to actually be used in a logo. Yuck. I do like the logo better when it's presented in one color. Then it just a modification of the shape, which works much better I think. 

Even without the cliche pillow gradients, the color choices are very questionable. We have lots of options. It kind of reminds me of the 2012 London Olympics logo in that way—although the designers of this logo clearly didn't remember all the bad press the London logo got for it's 80's neon color schemes. They may vary, but they're all pretty bright, and very trendy, colors. Not the best idea for long term branding. I suppose they're trying to make the logo young and hip, but 5-10 years from now those colors will be anything but hip. The 2012 logo can kind of get away with it simply because it's meant to be trendy to the times and after the Olympics it'll be outdated anyway—a keepsake to the time and place of the event. But that's not the the same for a brand, so the trendiness reflects poor long term judgment. Especially for a brand that's been as iconic as the original Y logo. Yes, it needed some updating—it screamed retro 60's, but still, those new colors are quite the leap.

Map to the power of Quest?

When was the last time you used MapQuest? Anyone? I think the last time I ventured to that site was through a link on an out of date website. Any other time, I'm all about Google Maps. That's not to say Google Maps is perfect, it's not. Google has led me to the complete wrong location a couple of times, but in the past few years, regardless of Google Maps' mistakes it has swept the internet mapping market. I want to say the shift began when Google introduced Street View and continued as Google Maps was automatically included on iPhones and Blackberrys. Then came walking and biking directions, the ability to shift your route, automatically giving you alternate routes and times and the live traffic feed.




Well, MapQuest has finally revamped, a couple of years late, but they're trying nonetheless. They have a new logo and a revdesigned website. First off, the new logo is definitely an improvement. I like it, thought as mentioned in Brand New's review, I originally saw M to the Q, which I really liked, until the video showed me the little MQ creature thing. Now that's all I see and I kind of liked the other direction better. Oh well. The logo itself seems to be molded around being a good icon, like an iPhone or iPad icon, which is a little different, but smart approach. The new logo overall is secondary to how the MQ functions as an icon and all in all, much improved.

The new MapQuest website is also much improved, though the real question is if it can recapture some of Google Maps market share. The revamping makes me want to give it a shot again, but unless it proves to be significantly more accurate than Google Maps, a switch back is doubtful. While they've finally incorporated some of the perks of Google Maps, like traffic and street view (though Google's is on a larger scale). They've also copied a few other features like customizable printed maps. While MapQuest is touting some of it's features that Google doesn't have, like saving your own maps, they're relatively small things I don't see a huge amount of use for. The little icon buttons that show ATMs and Gas Stations are nice though—I can definitely see the use for that if I needed something like that on the go, however, I see that mostly useful for a phone app and other popular applications, like Siri, already have that covered. The biggest lack in the new design, is if they were going to copy so much of Google's features, they really should have worked in the walking, public transporation and biking directions that Google has. Honestly, I think those are one of Google's best features.

Overall, the website, logo and icon are nicely designed, but in terms of functionality, it's hard not to feel like MapQuest is trying desperately to play catch up to Google Maps. What do you think?

Moulin Rouge Embraces the Windmill

The Moulin Rouge, Paris's famous cabaret, has a new identity and I must say I'm a fan. If you're familar with the Moulin Rouge, you know its visually distinctive feature is the giant red windmill that's stood since the cabaret's inception in 1889. The name actually means 'Red Mill' in french so it seems wholly appropriate for the logo to reflect that.

The difference between the old and new logos is pretty drastic. The old one has a kind of haphazard feel to it and the lipstick marks seems to play up the cabaret's can-can and striptease origins, whereas the new logo has a much more sophisticated look to it. The new logo plays up the windmill landmark but gives the overall feel of a higher end establishment. Both fit since the Moulin Rouge is a large tourist attraction and at around 100€ a ticket with dress code rules, it needs that classier outward appearance. I actually went to the Moulin Rouge a few years ago and saw the show. It's really mostly dance numbers with elaborate costumes and staging and sometimes the dancers are topless. It's still a classy show, so the new logo feels more appropriate.

What do you think?

via (Brand New)

United and Contintenal Airlines: Name vs. Logo

On Monday, United and Continental Airlines merged. You probably read about it in the news and maybe you even saw the 'new' logo. The way they've handled the naming and visual aspects of the new company is a little too simple. Essentially they kept the name United, but with the Continental logo. A fair trade off? A good way to merge two companies with brand equity and keep a bit of both? Maybe from a PR standpoint, but not from a brand perspective.

The new logo itself feels wrong. It's enough that the ditched the better of the two logos (and the one still using its original Saul Bass design), but just swapping out the name Continental for United without any other visual change makes the logo feel more like a gag design than a new, merged company logo. I get that both Continental and United are major airline brands and want to keep that equity through the merger, this wasn't quite the way to do it. As much as I'm not a fan of the new MillerCoors logo, at least it had the right idea. I'd rather have a United Contintental Airlines with a new logo that this weird little mash up. Brand New makes an interesting point about how this logo doesn't work mostly because it has brand equity.

What’s funny is that if this were a new airline, and we didn’t have the accumulated associations of both brands we would just say it’s boring and move on, but it’s impossible to see the new logo and not feel that there is something inherently wrong with this equation. In all likelihood we will see a new logo in the next year or two, unless they have started painting planes—in which case we are screwed.

Chipotle Does Logo Redesign Right

Chipotle recently rolled out a new logo and while it didn't get the greatest review from
Brand New, I'm digging it. I do agree with their comments, mainly critiques on the new font and pepper illustration, but think the new logo is a big success anyway.

One of Brand New's comments is that the new font doesn't represent industrial feel of the Chipotle restaurant interior as well as the old, Bank Gothic font. The new font is friendlier, and I do like it in the horizontal versions of the logo, but on the medallion, Bank Gothic was working well and didn't really need the change.

On the other hand, the pepper illustration is a vast improvement. Brand New commented that it's too close to clip art to work well, I disagree. It's basic design is a little cliche, but the design itself is both aesthetically pleasing, quickly and easily to read and understand even small or at a distance. The old illustration, while closer to a real pepper's shape, looks far too blob-like to function well in a logo. There are few other illustrations that go with the new pepper that are very nice as well.

The color swap is also a nice touch. While subtle, softening up the black to a dark red and swapping the dark and medium tones in the logo really work. The dark red behind the pepper makes it pop even more.

What do you think?

Tropicana Sales Drop With Redesign?

According to AdAge, Tropicana sales plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22 after they launched the botched redesign (left). Late February, Tropicana decided to revert back to their old packaging after large amounts of criticism from consumers and the design community.

We blogged and tweeted about the redesign and it sparked quite a bit of discussion. Some of the many responses we received centered around people being unable to find Tropicana juice since they scanned over it in the grocery store thinking it was a generic brand. While we can't necessarily claim cause and effect here, it makes sense. Hopefully for Tropicana this is a temporary, though costly, mistake and they won't lose any market share to competitors once people are able to find Tropicana again, but we'll see. Tropicana did open the door to competitors with this blunder after all...

Wisconsin Bombs Rebranding

Large corporations aren't the only ones capable of botching a rebranding job. The state of Wisconsin unveiled their new logo today and there is only one word to describe it: horrendous. I have nothing positive to say about it. The font has nothing particularly appealing about it and that little flag thing in the middle of the W just bothers me. I expect it to be there for a reason and there's no apparent reason to it's existence except to make the W particularly difficult to decipher at a glance. The wavy N is just as distracting. Then the whole word has the distinct shape of unnecessary use of Illustrator's bulge warp tool. At the risk of sounding preachy, Illustrator and photoshop filters can be godsends or train wrecks and it all depends on your discretion in using them. The epic fail is when they're unnecessarily used to try to beef up an otherwise poor design (e.g. the logo above). It never works. Use them with extreme caution.

Beyond the bad font choice, the logo fails again between that tag line and the completely random silhouette handstand that isn't remotely integrated into the design. Both the silhouette and tagline look completely tacked on. The handstand has no real reason to be there, except maybe to illustrate the painfully generic tagline, 'Live like you mean it,' which ironically comes straight from Bacardi. I mean Wisconsinites like their liquor, but if you were going to steal from such an ad, 'Please Drink Responsibly' would have at least been a little more true to some of the distinctive characteristics of the state.

Megan and I are both native Wisconsinites, and having lived out of state I'm very aware of the not-so-exciting reputation Wisconsin has in most of the rest of the country. That's exactly why it pains me to see that this is the 'new' face we're going to show to try to ramp up tourism? Ugh. Wisconsin is much better than that.

As much as I'm sure this botched logo is at least partly due to decision by committee, I can't believe the state paid $50,000 for that slapped together looking logo and a ripped off tagline.

What do you think of the new logo?

2009 Rebranding Awards

We've been ripping apart a lot of brand redesigns lately, so on a more upbeat note, I wanted to share the 2009 Rebranding Awards so we can all look at rebranding done right. The most dramatic shift, and my personal favorite is the rebranding of ICFJ (International Center for Journalists). I love the new color palette and corporate identity. Looking at the before and after examples is like night and day.

Which one is your favorite?

(via Brand New)

Kraft Corporate Is All Smiles

If Pepsi's new logos weren't smiling enough for you, Kraft Foods corporate has decided to make their logo 'happier' too. Luckily this is only on corporate materials since I don't think the new design is nearly as powerful as the old one.
The older logo has a very distinctive shape we all associate with Kraft Foods. When people see a design they tend to remember shape first, followed be color and then content. It's part of why people recall the Nike Swoosh, Apple's Apple and specific brand colors like Tiffany's robin's egg blue so easily. You'd be amazed at how easily you can recall some brands just based off a part of their logo in black and white or a color swatch of their specific brand color. This logo seems to have forgotten all that. Granted the rectangle diamond-ish shape of the old logo isn't as powerful as the Nike Swoosh, it's easily recognizable. The new smiley thing? Not so much. Not to mention the dimple/starburst at the end made out of all different shapes and colors. You could argue that this is a corporate logo, so quick consumer recognition is not as important, but that just brings up another issue with the new logo—it's childish. Really. Look at it. It looks like a logo for some sort of children's company. I get that Kraft makes many family friendly products, but for your corporate logo? It doesn't seem to fit.I don't mind the Kraft Foods font, and I agree with Brand New's remark that the lowercase k is actually quite pretty, but what was the designer thinking with that tagline font? Is that an Italic Comic Sans? Just the thought makes me shudder. Comic Sans is a font that should drop off the face of the earth, never to return. Ever.

At least Kraft didn't roll this out past usage as a corporate logo, but I'm still not a fan. What do you think?

Bringing Back The Orange

That's right. Tropicana announced today that after complaints from consumers they will be reverting to their old packaging starting next month. We blogged about the change a couple of weeks ago and according to the New York Times article about the switch back Neil Campbell, president at Tropicana North America in Chicago, stated “We underestimated the deep emotional bond” they had with the original packaging. The article also quotes Campbell as saying that it wasn't the volume of people, but the fact that the complaints came from some of their most loyal customers.

The reaction from Peter Arnell, of Arnell Group, who designed the packaging, however, is priceless:

“I’m incredibly surprised by the reaction,” he added, referring to the complaints about his agency’s design work, but “I’m glad Tropicana is getting this kind of attention.”

Umm, that's only a good thing if you run under the assumption that any attention is good attention. This isn't good attention, it's a PR mess. The NYT article actually compares PepsiCo's error on the Tropicana packaging to Coke's 'New Coke' fiasco from 1985.

At any rate, I'm just happy the good old orange and straw will be back on grocery store shelves soon.

Is That Really The Pepsi Logo Design Brief?

So remember when Pepsi came out with its new logos a few months ago? The varying 'smiles' of the Pepsi logo? Well, it appears that the Design Brief was leaked—a lovely 27 page document title Breathtaking. It does take your breath away too. I found myself gasping for air from laughing so hard while reading it. Honestly, at first glance the document seems so completely out there I was sure it was a hoax. An elaborate hoax, but still a hoax. Then I started digging a little deeper.

Oddly, no other blogs really seemed to think it was a hoax. Some of their commenters did, but overall the authors were all on board that this was a legit document leaked from Arnell Group, the agency behind the brand redesign and Tropicana's recent package design flop. I was still finding this a little hard to believe, but one blog directed me to AdGabber's post back in October when Pepsi unveiled its new logos.

In a brilliant move to debut their new line of logos, Pepsi sent 25 top bloggers a kit filled with a evolution of Pepsi logos and packaging, a DVD of Pepsi's history highlights and a set of new packaging with the new logos—everything these bloggers needed to announce Pepsi's new logos to the social media world. It really was a great move. In the DVD video contents from those original kits is a short video, posted on AdGabber and I've included it below as well. It shows an animation of the design process to make those weird 'smiley' logos. Check it out and pay attention about 45 seconds in (the music shifts there too). Then look at the selected Design Brief page to the right (click to enlarge). Uh oh, looks like this document might be legit after all.

You can see more excerpts at Gawker and Brand New or you can download the whole PDF at Fast Company. I'd recommend it, it's a good laugh.

Yes, I thought this was a hoax at first, but when you look closer there are a few legit parts in this overall relatively absurd document. They discuss Pepsi's logo and bottle evolution and there's a lot of talk of about the Golden Ratio, in fact they dedicated an page illustrating how the Pepsi logo smiles are same aesthetic geometry. I have to disagree since the end result smiles look more arbitrary than anything else, but the defense is there. It may be a bit pretentious and overstated, but we are talking about a huge brand here and no one pours millions into a brand without some justification as to what makes it great. Many large corporate logos, or even small business logos, have a lot more precision and thought behind them than the average person realizes—it's not intended to be elitest at all as much as it's just part of the design process of pushing to make just the right mark. The issue I have with the Pepsi brief is you can justify whatever you want with circle proportions, but that doesn't automatically make it good. Yes, the old Pepsi logo is balanced and aesthetically pleasing—the new ones, not as much, no matter how many circles within circles you draw for me.

The Golden Ratio stuff isn't what got me the most though. What really had me convinced it was a hoax at first was a little further on in the document where they start discussing the Pepsi Globe, where they compare the Pepsi logo's energy fields to the Earth's magnetic fields, and the Gravitational Pull of Pepsi diagrams, where they compare the gravitational pull of the sun to the gravitational pull of Pepsi. It's a little unclear what they're trying to represent there, but after looking at it for awhile I'm hoping it's referring to some kind of three dimensional in-store display and not that Pepsi is the center of the universe.

After looking through everything and writing this post, I'm pretty convinced it's a valid document, though probably incomplete. It is marked as a draft on the first page of the PDF. Unfortunately, valid or not, this is a PR nightmare for Pepsi and Arnell with all the negative criticism that's floating around about it.

What do you think? Real or hoax? Is the Design Brief too condescending?

Tropicana Abandons Iconic Image

Everyone knows the Tropicana image of the orange with a straw sticking out of it—it's been around forever. I remember as a kid actually trying to stick a straw in an orange and drink orange juice out of it. Seriously. However, on Tropicana's new redesigned orange juice packaging, they've completely scrapped that image! And I really don't understand why. That image has a lot of brand equity. Honestly, if you ask me about orange juices, the orange and straw is the first thing that pops into my head, followed inevitably by the the thought of Tropicana.

Unfortunately it seems Tropicana has scrapped it for what many designers are assessing as rather generic packaging—and I have to agree with them. It's nice generic packaging—it reminds me a bit of the simple and clean designs of Target owned brands—but it's still generic. Notice the new logo as well—also a sad generic version of the old one. Not much more than the word Tropicana set in Futura, dropping any tropic feel that the name or product might suggest for a colder, stoic brand personality.
Tropicana's new redesign isn't just their orange juice packaging, it's all of their juices. The overall effect is cohesive, if repetitive. Unfortunately in this particular case, the cohesive sameness of all of them makes me rely more on finding the text on the carton to get me the specific juice I want rather than a much easier visual cue. According to BrandWeek, Peter Arnell, head of the Arnell Group, the agency that redesigned all this, said:

""It's like having a glass come to your table. It's very elegant. We no longer wanted to work with assets or parts that were not clear to the consumer. They might have identified with the orange and the straw on the old packaging but no one new why it was there."

What? Isn't it there because we identify with it? Because it very elegantly and visually says 100% orange juice straight from the orange without actually having to say those words? Who exactly doesn't know why it's there? In BrandWeek's post Arnell also said:

"No one would ever write an article about Tropicana. Then you get rid of the orange and the straw and the whole world pays attention."

Yes the world paid attention, because the straw and orange is part of the brand. And a good part—people miss it. Update it, tweak it, rejuvenate it, but don't scrap it. I will admit, however, that I am a fan of the new caps. They are very clever, though not enough to make this package redesign a winner

Last year, Pepsi moved Tropicana from Element 79 to Arnell, and I can't say I'm impressed. Arnell is also the agency that brought us Pepsi's brand redesign a few months ago.

(Also see our follow up post: Tropicana's Sales Drop With Redesign?)

Sprite Goes Old With New Logo

Via Brand New, my favorite source for the latest logo redesigns, Sprite is the latest in the soft drink industry to revamp their logo. I'm pretty much always against starbursts, but I agree with Brand New's assessment of the interaction of the letters with the lemon-lime illustration and the starburst offers an opportune way to split the lemon-lime. I still don't particularly like it, but a little further research showed that starburst actually appears to be a kind of retro update.

Check out that old startburst! Overall, I don't mind the new one, though if they were going to go the retro route, I wish they would have taken it a step further so the new logo had a retro feel beyond the starburst. The starburst element alone doesn't feel retro without the comparison and I would love to see them resurrect some of that funky old type.

What do you think?

AB InBev Logo Fails To Excite

Back in July we posted about Anheuser Busch being bought by Belgian brewer InBev and the subtle change in Budweiser's ads from the sale. No longer was Budweiser touting its US ownership, but just trying to enforce the idea without actually saying it.Yesterday AB InBev unveiled their new corporate logo and Brand New made an interesting point about the inclusion of the eagle in a post this afternoon. It's so American. The company is not. So why is this international company using such an American symbol? Yes, there's the argument that AB has quite a bit of equity in the eagle, whereas InBev's logo has little to none, but perhaps it's partially to make us forget AB is no longer American owned?
Honestly, I would have preferred the logo without the eagle. It's just plain ugly. It's has bad color choices and far too much gradient action happening. Yuck. And the type? Well it has an unnecessary, though slight, drop shadow on it. Enough said.

Another thing to note, why does the AB have such a different type treatment? I realize it's probably to separate the two different companies, but it really feels like two different logos with an eagle plopped on top. Thoughts?

Pepsi Is Smiling

In the past few months we've blogged about new logo redesigns for Applebee's, Walmart and Best Buy, and it seems that Pepsi is now joining in with a new, smiling, brand redesign.

Pepsi has evolved it's logo a number of times in it's history, but this latest move is pretty drastic in the grand scheme of identity evolutions. Where did the white wave in the middle of the pepsi logo go? Oh, it turned into a smile. Yes, a smile, at least according to Pepsi that's what it's supposed to be. Sorry, never would have guessed that if I hadn't read it in AdAge. Apparently the 'smile' will change based on what product it is on. I'm not a fan of the new 'smile' mark, or the new, unnecessary name change of Mountain Dew to Mtn Dew. I do,however, like the super clean new packaging of Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max, just not their new weird 'smiling' logos.

On the flip side, in this new age of digital media, where a brand's logo will be altered by consumers whether the brand likes it or not, Joseph Jaffe suggests in Join the Conversation that in this digital age, brands need to be more flexible with their brand standards. Part of me wants to scream no to that idea, especially when I see casual and prevalent use of drop shadows and badly set type, but another part of me understands the necessity to let go a little in this new media age. In that respect, I think this new approach from Pepsi is a nice step in that direction and works as a flexible mark. I just wish they hadn't messed with the wave, especially since no one is going to understand the new mark as a smile without some prodding.

What do you think? Do you interpret the new Pepsi logos as smiles? Do you think this new flexible brand approach will work?

Best Buy's New Understated Logo?

Yes, Best Buy seems to have jumped on the bandwagon of updating its logo to be cleaner and more modern. Similar to my post a few months ago about Walmart's new logo design, I can't say I'm a huge fan. They seem to have the same branding advisors as Walmart. Especially when the two logo shifts are eerily similar and only a few months apart. Can we now expect all brands to go mostly text with a little icon at the end? Is UPS going to downgrade it's shield to an afterthought like Best Buy's price tag is?

Granted, the price tag is a pretty lame visual conceptually, but its shape and bright yellow had equity. My biggest issue is that in the name of becoming 'clean' and 'modern' Best Buy has made their logo feel more generic. I was not a fan of their old font, old color or even the old shape, but I don't think this new logo is serving the brand very well either. It's lost most of it's visual equity in the transition. I agree it's cleaner and part of me definitely likes the new price tag, but as a whole it just feels so generic. I can't help but think there was something in between. The old font was terrible, so the new one is an upgrade, but wasn't there a way to do that without taking the whole logo as far away from the original as they have? What do you think?

Also check out Under Consideration's Brand New for further critique and a peek at their new store signage.

Walmart Scraps the Hyphen

Retail giant, Walmart, is changing its logo and signage. Walmart is ditching its hyphen and all caps letters for a 'friendlier' looking logo with a large sunburst. Can't say I'm a huge fan of the new logo, but I wasn't really a fan of the old one either.

The old logo had a bit of a blocky, discount store look to it, but that's what Walmart is, isn't it? This new logo seems to be trying a little to hard and clearly coming out at a time when Walmart is trying to change its image. I'll admit, I actually don't mind the sunburst (gasps ensue...) but I am definitely not a fan of that font. Something about those lower case a's is bugging me. What do you think? Is it an improvement?

Check out the history of the Walmart logo here.