I was just walking by the new Umbra store near queen st. and noticed their logo. Aside being pink and white something bothered me and soon I realized their logo looks like York University's logo which was rebranded a few years back. Umbra is a modern home decor company based in Toronto, which recently changed their visual identity. This came about when the design firm Concrete noticed that Umbra had several different logos in their catalogue. This was brought to their attention and Umbra felt they needed to make some changes. They needed a stronger brand identity which would help with better brand recognition as well as to help prevent knock-offs with their products. They also wanted a logo that would work well on all design applications as well as to convey something more young, contemporary and legible - one of their main problem with the old logo was illegibility. They also used the U to represent one of their most successful and earliest product - the plastic flip-top garbage can.
I do agree that the current brand is much more solid and recognizable, but the "optima" style U reminds me too much of York University, who ironically uses a bold sans serif U with serif logotype - it oddly appears to be switched around.
Logo recognition
1 comment:
Unfortunately, there will always be similarities between company logos, for instance, the whole Quark fiasco. Seeing things like this scare me, because I know for a fact that there are going to be more and more logos in the future...meaning more chances to repeat someone else's work. Let's face it, we're all going to run into that problem someday.
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