It’s the future, today!īut the promise of the millennium hasn’t really panned out: 9/11 and the recession would soon follow. “It was really successful,” she says “In every test, people really responded to it.” The new millennium, at least as a lot of fast-food branding tells it, is a time of movement and new promise. Millman and Sterling were the ones who made Burger King’s logo italic, added dimension to the burger, and added that blue swoosh. Millman, who at the time was at branding design firm Sterling Brands, says there was a big “new millennium” push, with brands wanting to appear forward-thinking and dynamic. It’s perhaps telling that many of these brands shed the logos they’re now returning to around 1999. But going to an old version of a logo “is a way to avoid that,” she says. Debbie Millman, the chair of the master’s in branding program at the School of Visual Arts and the host of the podcast Design Matters, points out how often a logo change is met with pushback, even if the outrage dies down in a matter of weeks. Some of that is because it gives brands a better chance at avoiding the inevitable backlash that comes every time a brand announces a new logo. it’s not just that fast-food graphic design is going retro, it’s that it’s reverting to logos that are nearly identical to the ones these chains gave up in the ’90s and early 2000s. Right now we happen to be taking our cues from the ’90s, and back in the ’90s, we were taking a lot of cues from the ’70s.Ī post shared by D.G. This is sort of just how trends go every few years, the pendulum swings from the previous trends (which in our case was sans serif fonts and minimalist lines), and each generation looks backward for inspiration. “Serif logos more generally also convey a sense of rootedness to humanity that’s particularly appealing right now - the reappearance of the hand of the artist,” wrote Erin DeJesus back in 2019, and that appeal has only proliferated over the past two years. There’s an overall appreciation for ’70s aesthetics happening, from the new Silk Sonic album (complete with Bootsy Collins) to the return of bell bottoms to the general spread of serifed fonts. By reverting to logos that existed when Gen Xers and millennials were kids, brands are attempting to convey multiple meanings: comfort, quality, handmade-ness, and quite possibly an elision of all the things millennials grew up to distrust about fast food.įast food is not unique in its embrace of the retro. Millennials have the least amount of wealth in the U.S., but they’re adults who make up the largest part of the workforce, meaning there’s a huge opportunity to court them with cheap food that is available everywhere. And Yuengling, for a limited time in 2019, released some ’80s-style cans.īranding is all about who you’re trying to attract. Starting in 2018, KFC spelled out “Kentucky Fried Chicken” in clean black-and-white text, and is now advertising buckets featuring a drawing of Colonel Sanders like the one the chain used through 1976, alongside retro-logoed Pepsi. Early in 2020, Doritos went with a yellow-and-orange retro look for its taco-flavored chips, complete with a Frito-Lay logo discontinued in 1997. More recently, its ads feature comedian Craig Robinson in a wood-paneled dining room, playing Pac-Man under faux-Tiffany lamps as part of a whole retro campaign. In 2019, Pizza Hut brought back its “classic” logo, used from 1967 to 1999, to replace one with a tilted roof and yellow and green accents. I’m being environmentally story told to /GGHNjVQASb- poor, poor pitiful mike March 2, 2021īurger King isn’t the only company moving forward by looking backward. I knew exactly what it was trying to do, but despite myself, I liked it.īurger King app menu looks like it’s from another world. And of course, the change came with a PR push touting a new “minimalist logo seamlessly meets the brand evolution of the times,” the chain said, noting that the new logo is not actually new - it’s nearly identical to those the company used from 1969 to 1999. There were no more italics, no more extraneous highlights or swoops, and the bun was now a burnt orange. The new logo was similar to the one I remember from my childhood. I must have hit it on the day the change went into effect, because then, the page refreshed itself, and it was replaced by an entire site redesign, with beiges and browns serving as the background and everything written in fat, serifed fonts. Where is this burger going? Please calm down. It was the sort of busy, dynamic logo that evoked forward movement and edginess, and that honestly sometimes stressed me out. The words “Burger King” were italicized at first, surrounded by a yellow bun and encircled in Sonic the Hedgehog blue. While loading Burger King’s website, I saw the change firsthand.
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