'Tis the season of the rebrand

Waitrose, Uber, even Burberry (a timeless classic) have all changed their logos recently and we couldn’t wait to have our say. Keep scrolling to see the changes.

It must be rebranding season because everyone’s at it! And who doesn’t love a good brand shake-up? With technology and trends moving faster than ever, companies worldwide are being forced to change in order to stay relevant. Here's a brief round up of some of the most recent logo changes you may have missed.

John Lewis & Waitrose

Before & After:

Credit: John Lewis Partnership

The John Lewis Partnership (John Lewis & Waitrose) has undergone a massive rebrand recently with the help of global branding consultancy, Pentagram. According to JLP, the two brands have modernised their image and added (& partners) to their logos to "highlight their Partnership business model" and ‘focus on what differentiates them from competitors’. Personally, I was fond of the old logos and do miss the John Lewis green, what do you guys think?

Burberry

Before & After:

Credit: Burberry Group PLC

For the first time in twenty years, the British fashion house has jumped ship from the elegance of sophisticated chic down gear to a more conventional and expected Sans-Serif face.

Burberry’s new logo waves goodbye to the classic knight and horse and says hello to a clean, Helvetian logo. No doubt this new identity - and particularly the new logo - is a strategy to shed the trench-coat image to be seen as a thoroughly modern designer.

As for the monogram, below, the designer (Peter Saville) has taken Thomas Burberry’s initials and turned them into an interlocking pattern, using an orange, brown and white colour palette.

I can't help thinking that most of these fashion logos are essentially now the same – Tom Ford, Saint Laurent, Burberry, Chanel, Balenciaga, even less considered brands such as La Coste and Aldo. Surely these fashion giants with heaps of creativity and enormous budgets can manage to differentiate themselves with more consideration?

Uber

Before & After:

The new logo is a simple word mark that (naturally) reads 'Uber,' with a capital U, in Uber Move, a typeface that was custom-designed for the company.

In terms of colour, Uber is honing in on mainly black and white within its new guidelines. However, there is a clever secondary palette, all of which take inspiration from transport.

These bold-but-soft hues of green, yellow, red, brown, orange and purple feel very akin to a Google eco-system, but never the less they are most welcome in this new brand revolution.

The bright shade of blue is the “safety colour,” inspired by the associations of blue with security in everyday life.

Final Word

There comes a time in every company’s life where the branding, or at least the logo, needs to evolve. Especially when your brand is within such a fast paced vertical, such as technology or fashion.

However, I feel there’s a fine line when it comes to iconic British brands like John Lewis and Burberry. Their brands are associated with timelessness and heritage. So, changing the logo to something more ‘modern’ and less ‘classic’ is not always necessarily a good move.

For brands like Uber, on the other hand, I can see exactly why a more minimalistic and futuristic approach is a great direction.