Seattle’s Best Coffee, which was acquired by Starbucks in 2003, unveiled a new logo design this week and it’s been causing quite a…stir. Following the recent trend popularized by President Obama’s 2008 election campaign logo and Pepsi’s controversial re-branding, the coffee franchise’s new logo is simple, sleek, and a little bland. We dig the coffee cup and liquid drop idea, but the color palette is weaker than a mug of bad jo. The choice to maintain Seattle’s Best Coffee’s red color, in particular, makes one blogger’s assessment that the new logo is fit for a blood bank (not a java joint) pretty accurate. A for effort, but C for overall execution.
Making the Grade: MTV’s New Logo
MTV’s iconic logo recently got a facelift – or a tummy tuck, to be more accurate. It’s been years since the MTV mother channel has played an entire music video, opting instead for trashy reality shows like Jersey Shore, and the slogan “Music Television” has become completely irrelevant. The new logo is more transparent, and slices off the bottom of the famous image, including the part that says “Music Television.” “Music is still at the center of so much of what we do, but we’ve really expanded what that means,” MTV general manager Stephen Friedman said in a statement that makes no sense. “It’s an updating that speaks to [our] audience in a much simpler, bolder way.” Branding Ideas thinks not. If you’re going to mess with something as iconic as the MTV brand, at least put some effort and creativity into it. The new logo is lazy and misguided. We give it a big fat D.
Making the Grade: 2012 Summer Olympics
Continuing Branding Ideas’ look at some new, recent, and vintage logos, branding and packaging, let’s check out the logo for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, which was designed by Wolff Olins and was unveiled to much chatter back in 2007. The design has received mixed reviews at best. We think this logo is confusing and poorly executed. The shapes were intended to spell out 2012, but instead evoke all other kinds of images and ideas, the font for “London” seems amateurish, though the Olympic rings are unmistakable. The universal rings themselves get an A. Olins’ logo: D.
Famous Logo Makeovers
Covering similar territory as a topic we posted back in March (“What’s in a Logo?“), CNNMoney.com posted an article yesterday titled “What’s in a New Logo?” It’s an interesting piece about how big brands like Apple, Starbucks, British Petroleum, IBM, Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, UPS, Walmart and Xerox have evolved their identities, often with controversial results. Most fascinating, we think,is the path Ronald Wayne’s original logo for Apple, depicting Issac Newton sitting underneath a tree with an apple hanging from it, has taken from a garage in 1976 to the universal chrome apple with a bite missing.
