Here is a question submitted from one of our viewers:

“what do you think?……”
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/109607/seattles-best-coffee-stirs-up-heated-opinions

The article refers to the redesign of the Seattles Best coffee companies recent logo redesign, and here is my quick response:

“There has been a ridiculous trend toward ‘clean’ sans serif type styles especially in branding lately… I think a lot of it has to do with how a mark is implemented.. I think the best big company redesigns are those that take into consideration the history of a mark and seek to improve them rather than completely disregard them…

The Seattle’s Best was a very recognizable mark that wasn’t great but wasn’t bad either, it had a more traditional look and was probably a little clunky for modern usage such as web, small sized implementation, mass simplified production, (gradients and gold color 2 difficult things for printing, especially when simplified down to one color processes or just consistency of colors)

I think the new logo jumped too far from the recognition that the company has created with their mark already, and it jumped into a pretty much trendy/clean aesthetic which makes it look super generic, which is not in the best interest if they are looking to remain familiar feeling with the coffee market.. The new mark is very sterile and not something I would be excited to see in the morning when I’m a little groggy.”