Once more, with feeling

After a decade of blandification logo fonts are getting emotional again

Big tech companies and luxury fashion brands are unlikely style partners. Yet, over the course of a decade an increasing number of brands from both sectors began to look stylistically similar. This is changing again now as each sector’s logo styles diverge once more. What do these parallel trends tell you about changing cultural attitudes? What do they reveal about the things we all care about today and what we’ll care about tomorrow?

Go back a decade and the old logos told you something about each brand. Tech logos felt exuberant as they told their origin stories. Luxury fashion logos felt expensive and ready to feature on the front cover of Vogue magazine.

But then, one by one, the logos were redesigned. They became simple and minimal in a style 15-year-old Bella describes as “bold and blocky”. There were no unnecessary ornamental details such as the small feet-like details called serifs that have featured on printed Roman type since the late 1400s. These logos all used sans (without) serif fonts. But it wasn’t just the serifs that were discarded, they also relinquished their distinctive personalities. Minimalist logos rely on your knowledge of the brand to make that important emotional connection.

Of course, a brand is more than just a logo, it’s a whole system. I’m just looking at the logos for the purpose of these comparisons.

What the font’s going on?

Logos and their fonts are cultural codes. They narrate changing attitudes and they document social change. The changing of trends is cyclical. How…