Branding: the good and the frickin ugly
The first homework of corporate ID; what’s good and what are bad examples of branding from companies so of course to start this off i take a trip to Walmart and look at whatever catches my eye. (in my opinion)
That which sucks
To start us off, maybe a hot take but logos and branding that “just do something snazzy with the A” SUCK. You’re telling me that you put all that money into something that is gonna represent your company and brand and you choose the take a slice out of the A, remove the dividing line, cut in half? This is just one example i found at the local Walmart but danm, why do so many people do this?
Now, this is definitely a clear choice and tells you right away the name but, I just wanna know what was the point of putting the “&” that large in the “n”. I suppose its so its all readable at a smaller size but, its giving could’ve done better. Even moving the ampersand inside the second capital C would make it better to me, because something tells me they really liked that repetition and alignment of the “Clea”.
double up round because i don’t really like both of these. first we got Folgers, this logo/ mountain range i feel like hasn’t changed since the 2000s and they’re weird brother-sister glad your home staring commercial when i was a kid. The faint memory of the jingle lurks in my head as a see this but this coffee and this brand does not give me nostalgia. This is just like their coffee….MID. It needs an update, can keep the font(change a tad to something more modern but still has that rustic morning feel, and no gradient background mountainess sunset like I’m looking at a National Geo graphic.
Second we have the body and hair care brand OGX. Now I do like the leaf but this shit is way to big for me, I like the font too since i like me some variable line weight fonts but i feel there’s better ones than this. Otherwise, It just needs a tweak I love the gold and green consistency on their bottles
That which is good
Period King. the fonts, fantastic, I really enjoy that script and i never thought i would like a monotype font like this but here I am. You see that crown and two little stars and you know what the dealio is and what the brand is. subtle and gets the point across and doesn’t look stupid.
Bubble, a relatively new brand on the skin care market that I seen at Walmart. I really like the packaging and I really like the logo. I look at this and it looks fun and cute and makes me think of the bubbles from washing my face, the way they place the letters to give them a bouncy feeling and the fact they went with a normal to medium weight helps with the light feeling and their color choices as well. the way they jumble the characters up i still can read this and I still get the feeling of the brand from far away.
And last but not least, Land of the Free. First, this is so clean and nice, the fonts are quite nice if I say so myself, the colors are also very good as they invoke the nature feel and the warm tones of the land. Along with the lovely illustrations on the products i like what’s going here, at first i thought the kerning was to much for my liking but I actually think it goes well with landscape vibe going on and the free as everything has room to breath, almost like being outside and taking in the scene.
so I don’t know how to end this but i will say that I’m a bit biased and that a couple months or a year from now i might change my mind, but at the moment I know what I like as a designer, and as the consumer i know what catches my eye. Peace ✌🏾
