Breadline Design

Over the last few weeks Coca-Cola have rolled out their new look can over the UK. In true minimalist style they’ve stripped the design back to its bare brand bones, the name and a single flowing white line. Bevels, colours, shadows and supporting graphics have been cast aside in order to push the iconic two colour design and flowing stripe.

It’s a good move. The design is striking, if only because we’re so used to seeing the cylinder in its Saturday night best vying for attention next to its equally noisy shelf rivals. It harks back to Cokes southern American roots, and gives the can a real “classic” feel.

The re-design is most likely a strategic decision. Pepsi have gone to town of late with their cans clothing, and to go left when the opposition goes right is always a bold move, especially for a brand as weighty as Coca Cola. Such a change helps differentiate one brand from the next, but perhaps more importantly allows for a fresh canvas for whatever marketing move they make next, which in today’s ever changing society you can bet will be sooner rather than later. 

This is a recent logo I designed for a Newcastle based company. They supply audio equipment for gigs, studios and clubs.

It’s great when huge companies make big brand changes. It gives brand designers a chance to see how big business view themselves in their current market place, it gives an indicator as to where the company sees itself going, and best of all you get to bear witness to the often hugely polarized online opinion, (which is always a great excuse to wade into a forum and lambaste a junior).

Xerox are the latest corporate behemoth to change face, casting aside the hard edged uppercase typeface of yesteryear in favour of a more huggable, smooth-edged, lowercase typeface of the moment. Even the famous pixel formed X icon has been shown the door, replaced by an abstract “X-Ball”, which I can’t help feel sits uncomfortably close to the Xbox 360 logo. The strong red remains however, being joined, we’re promised, by a variety of other brand colours across all media.

The rebrand seems to be well timed. I know little about the company, but thanks to some surprisingly straight-talking press releases from those involved it seems that it’s the right time for Xerox to update their image. Richard Wergan, vice president of their worldwide brand division states:

“Xerox is still perceived incorrectly as a copier company. We do not make copiers.”

Fair play. The change appears to be more than skin deep too, with one of their analysts, Angele Boyd saying:

“They have made significant changes in the last several years. Packaging and branding have not kept pace,”

All sounds good, however the motives for the re-brand have to be questioned. Xerox has worked hard to recover from heavy debt and financial scandal, yet their share price has yet to reflect this. If the rebrand is genuinely part of a concerted effort by Xerox to show the world they have evolved, then the I think the brand will become a success, and perhaps as Iconic as the identity they’ve discarded.  However if the new brand values are not carried through to the heart of the company, and their previously flawed business model corrected in step, then this latest re-brand may be the final multi-million dollar shot in the arm which finishes Xerox off.