Logo Banality

The New York Times has an article discussing the rebranding of several corporations, notably Wal-Mart. I’m not against a redesign of any brand, provided the company has something new to offer (viz, BP). But what is Wal-Mart trying to say with their new logo (arrows are mine)?

I mean, what the hell is that asterisk for? Wal-Mart calls it a “spark.” Sure. To me, it punctuates many years’ worth of abysmal employee treatment. “Wal-Mart. Yay! Kinda!”

Kraft is trying the same thing, adding lower case letters for a “new” touch, but completely missing the boat with the graphic.

Do they sell flowers? Do they sell fireworks? I have no idea from the logo, but I know I can’t eat those. There was nothing wrong with the old logo, and they’ve trashed its simple power with this elaborate silliness. It just makes me think how apt the phrase “technicolor yawn” is.

In a similar vein, the new Cheer logo has multicolored spooge bursting from itself. I don’t mind the jumbled letters so much, it reminds me of my washing machine agitating the crap out of my clothes, and if they’d left out the splatter, they might have been onto something, particularly because the old logo is nothing special. But no, more is always better, right? Not to mention the tagline, “brightCLEAN” is the fused neologism of a corporation itself, not a description.

Pressing forward, Stop & Shop shot itself in the foot with its redesign.

The old logo is nigh perfect. And how do you rebrand a logo that embodies the name with a literal graphic? Why, you give it to a kid who knows how to use the copy & rotate functions in Illustrator! I don’t know what I can buy at Stop & Shop, but I’ll bet they have candied orange slices.

Super Fresh was on the right track, and they started with a rather bland logo, but the sage green doesn’t bespeak freshness to me, and the graphic is just superfluous. Not everybody needs a graphic with their logotype, guys. IBM, anyone?

Likewise, Sysco’s burning desire to get in on the lower case game wasn’t so bad. Their old logo is, admittedly, a bit clunky.

But they could have kept the instantly recognizable box graphic (which is clever, as Bill Marsh points out in the article, and bespeaks storage and transport), and that semicircle bit on the capital “S” says nothing about them or what they do, and it doesn’t fit in with the rest. Why add whimsy when it has nothing to do with your company? Sysco moves food from supplier to seller quickly and safely. That’s important, necessary work. Make that the focus of your brand, and you have our respect.

The only example I really liked was Aussie supermarket chain Woolworths. Like the font (if maybe a bit thin), like the colors, love the new graphic. Good work, Hans Hulsbosch.

The world is full of banal designers. I’m just amazed that they keep getting hired and paid to produce such ill-considered and counterproductive work.