![]() Had the siren turned into a mule, or the green changed to orange, or the circular shape changed to a triangle, then the warning lights would have been warranted. This is a welcome refresh that will build new relevance for Starbucks and the next generations of consumers of caffeine or whatever comes next. Maybe stepping away from the outer circle will leave the one-off coffee shops wondering what visual vernacular is left to steal. Travelers throughout Europe have come to identify coffee shops by knock-off circular signs with type wrapping around whatever happens to sit in the center. Unfortunately, the outer circle was hardly a protectable device. There is a good argument to be made that the encasing outer circle may have as much if not more equity than the siren. They are the only ones who can give an entity permission to make a brand extension, and they will vote with their dollars.įor designers, meanwhile, the point of greatest contention seems to be the elimination of the logo’s green surrounding donut. Will it work? That’s up to consumers to decide. It also moves the brand to a place where language differences are no longer a barrier. Knocking “coffee” out of the nomenclature of the brand sets the stage for Starbucks to explore other offerings in a segment that may already be oversaturated. It changed its name to Boston Market that year, too late in the game. ![]() Recall the rapid growth of Boston Chicken in the the early 1990s, and then the species trap it found itself in by 1995. This kind of product association can be a blessing and a curse, and it’s more the latter if the company wishes to leverage the name against product or services of the non-java orientation. Really, the decisive edit to this visual brand shift is the elimination of the word “coffee.” That’s a critical move because “Starbucks” and “coffee” have become synonymous - maybe not to the degree of a proprietary eponym like Kleenex, or Band Aid, or Xerox, but to the point that, if Starbucks is the question, coffee is the answer. In fact, the company’s CEO, Howard Schultz, in the introductory video of the edited logo on the company’s site, shows an example of the Starbucks name set as a floating wordmark that can accompany the logo. No one is saying that this mark will never be accompanied by “Starbucks” on marketing or other collateral materials. In doing so, it has freed itself from some limiting baggage With the cropping of its logo, Starbucks has elected to join the limited fraternity of nameless entities - meaning it’s now positioned to rely on a symbol-based logo without any text to serve as training wheels.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |