The Greiging of America

Written by: Brian Gross, Founder

I recently noticed that every house on my street (including my own) is some tone of gray. I also read that greige is the most popular color inside the homes.

It made me wonder if that is somehow connected to the homogenization of corporate logos. Are both of these a response to the instability of our world with war, climate change, pandemics, and inflation? Do we crave some normalcy, or for lack of a better term, a little more boring in our lives?

I am in the business of finding a brand’s fascination or amplifying its uniqueness, so I have been struggling to understand why a brand’s personality is being squeezed out of the logos we have lived with for years, decades, or even centuries.

The latest victim is Johnson & Johnson’s beautiful script typeface. It has been replaced with a basic sans-serif font. What’s even more surprising is there’s a page on the J&J website that celebrates their unique logo. They proclaim: “More than 130 years after James Wood Johnson co-founded Johnson & Johnson, his handwritten signature is still being used as the company logo to this day.” Ummm, no it’s not. Not anymore.?

A recent press release from J&J states: “Many children no longer learn to write cursive in school, noted marketing consultant Laura Ries. People may recognize the signature, but they weren’t necessarily reading it, she said. The new logo, she said, is easier to process.” I couldn’t disagree more, I think the old logo was iconic and didn’t need to be read. Ironically, the new logo is actually harder to process since you now need to read the unfamiliar words.

Nike, Apple, Starbucks and Target’s logos don’t even use a wordmark anymore, they use icons. And I think the cursive J&J logo was an icon. My children were able to identify the McDonald's golden arches before they could even read, the same could have been said for J&J.

But what is the real reason for the change? Some theorize it was a way to distance themselves from their recently tampered products. To me, it feels like a retreat.

There has been so much backlash to this movement that there is a term for it: blanding. Even a parody of the Coca-Cola logo being neutered recently barely registered an eyebrow raise.

But maybe we shouldn’t blame corporations since they’re just reflecting back what we want to see: safeness. Maybe the world is so crazy right now that all we can handle is a basic sans-serif font in the color greige.

I’ll be rooting for the day we can return to fascinating.