JCPenney last ‘officially’ updated their logotype in 1971 – changing from a custom script (seen above) to Helvetica, set clean and neat (below).
1971
And last night – in a series of Academy Awards spots – jcp unveiled its new moniker (at bottom). Red box (retained from originally, their ‘it’s all inside’ campaign), lowercase helvetica, still clean and neat.
‘The winning design was provided by Luke Langhus, a third-year graphic design student at the University of Cincinnati.’
I do like when a redesign keeps the flavor of the original – here’s the official press release. Although this update does beg a few questions:
Doesn’t this look a lot like what GAP abandoned last year? And is the connection to Target’s brand a bit too obvious? And is ‘crowd sourcing’ how they went about this?
‘Participants included the Company’s associates, several design agencies and two art schools – University of Cincinnati and Rhode Island School of Design – that collectively submitted over 200 designs for consideration.’
I hope on the labor front, logo development participants were not as crowdsourced as is becoming commonplace. And it is a risky move to go this route – some could say jcp is running with what GAP chose to reject.
Though in the end, good merch behind the logo will determine what happens next. ‘What’s inside’ is still more important than not.
2011
1964 Penneys architectural drawing found via Vintage Seattle, click image to view larger, more/jump
Tags: design, design history, fashion, illustration, typography by steve
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