Wally Gets Soft

July 10th, 2008 at 09:58am Cindy Harris

Wal-Mart, the world’s No. 1 retailer, has unveiled a new corporate logo that soon will be replacing the blue “Star” logo created in 1992 on everything from the front of the store to the bags in your cart…and probably everywhere else you look given Wal-Mart’s market penetration. It’s a decidedly softer image than the previous version, perhaps in response to its competition from higher-end discount retailer Target, whose advertising clearly targets the hip, suburban mom.

Critical response to the new logo has not been very kind. Some comments on an industry board run by Creativity.com includes:

Sixteen years of branding an identity and they throw it out the window to start over? Any brand manager worth their salt would know that consistency is key to maintaining and building a brand. Not that I was a big fan of the old logo. Both the old and new logo are pretty generic and look to have been made with basic fonts and dingbat icons.

The font (an altered Myriad?) and the star (a circle of apostrophes) are the proverbial “something my daughter could do in art camp”. Who got paid how much to do it?!

I like the logo type; however, what’s up with the ambiguous “sun” icon? It’s definitely more contemporary, but that’s where it ends. They went from in-your-face to indifferent.

What do you think?

Wal-Mart logos through the years:

1962 - 1964

1964 - 1981

1968-1981

1981 - 1992

1992 - 2008

Entry Filed under: Graphic design, Creative, Traditional advertising