i had been thinking about writing about corporate logos for awhile, and today read an article in usa weekend about the redesign of the betty crocker cake mix boxes, and am shocked at what went into it.

i noticed a few months ago, driving across country and seeing numerous subways (the sandwich shop, of course. not the underground things in new york city ;) ) that they had redesigned their logo. which isn't suprising - many fast food chains have done so - burger king, pizza hut...what did suprise me was how slight the redesign was. the old logo, the word 'subway' with an arrow at the beginning of the letter 's' and another arrow at the end of the letter 'y', written in white and yellow, stayed the same, aside from the fact that it is now italicized.

i wonder how much market research, time, effort and psycology went into that change. does an italicized subway make hungry customers buy bigger sandwiches? stop at subways more often? imagine the conversations in cars zooming by the lone gas station with a subway in nowhere, nebraska. 'oh, bob, i'm so hungry. look! there! subway! and its italicized NEW logo. wow. the food must be better now. let's stop and get something.'

in reality, most people probably don't even notice. why do they do it then? who comes up with the idea that, god forbid, our logo looks 'old' and we need a new one? subway's home page proclaims '19150 restaurants in 74 countries' (i think restaurant is stretching it a bit, but...). that is thousands of signs and advertisments and sandwich wrap papers and cups to change. the cost of just changing the highway signs would be a fortune, not to mention the lighted shop signs, window decals, menu boards. of course, that's a cost that is reflected in the price of the sandwich. personally, i'd prefer cheaper food and the boring old logo, but that's me.

ups also has a new logo. gone is the old sheild with 'ups' inside and the rectangular box with a little bow above it. now it's just the sheild with slightly different colouring. the package, to me, reflected what ups does. united parcel service. they deliever parcels, as represented by the box. ups did take over mailboxes, etc., so perhaps it is to emphasize that they just don't 'do boxes' anymore. of course one would think, 'oh, the package is gone from the logo. i guess they must make copies and faxes now.' i think not, though i wouldn't be suprised if market researchers felt differently about that. but, again, hundreds of thousands of logos need to be changed. maybe i should get in the business of repainting ups trucks....