Guest Editorial by Joshua Levi Posted BY Brand New

United Colors. Now with more Benetton.

The year is 1985. In America, Reagan is in the White House, Michaal Jackson and Lionel Richie are writing “We Are The World”, and Cliff Huxtable is dazzling us with his wardrobe of knit sweaters. In Italy, the country’s largest clothing maker, The Benetton Group, coins the phrase “United Colors of Benetton”. The phrase is blasted into pop culture, not only referencing the company’s colorful clothing but also the idea that cultural diversity is good. Today, Benetton colorfully dresses customers in 120 countries and is in the process of rolling out an evolved graphic identity system designed by Pentagram partners Daniel Weil and Michael Bierut with the internal Benetton team.

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Opinion BY Armin

Mango Ripens

Established in 1984 in Barcelona, Mango is an international fashion brand for women and men with fun, friendly, accessible clothing. While they have a small presence in the U.S. they are very well known in Europe. Mango currently operates over 2,000 stores in 105 countries and counts with more than 8,000 employees. I remember there being a store in Mexico City and it used to be geared towards a younger demographic but it seems like they have upped the age range and have introduced a new logo that is aimed at a more mature audience. The new logo was designed in-house.

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A B-Side BY Armin

Nebraska Book Company

Established in 1915, the Nebraska Book Company is a national distributor of textbooks for universities and operates over 280 campus bookstores around the U.S. Working with Kansas City, MO-based Nathaniel Cooper Creative the company has rebranded to Neebo (plenty of applications at this link).

Opinion BY Rietje Gieskes

Hammer Time, is Over

If you live in the Netherlands and are in need of a new set of tools or paint supplies, you may find yourself heading to a newly rebranded Praxis. The popular hardware store chain consists of 136 stores, including some smaller franchises and 26 megastores. The new design has quietly appeared with little explanation or fanfare.

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Opinion BY Armin

Office Doodles

Originally established in 1960 in Los Angeles, Viking Direct, supplier of office products to small and medium businesses, first appeared in the UK in 1990 and Australia in 1993 establishing a strong mail order presence overseas. It was purchased by Office Depot in 1998 and by 2002 had expanded its catalog and web delivery service to Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal. This month Viking Direct changed its name to just Viking and introduced a new identity designed by Lippincott (who also have a spiffy new website) that premiered with the mailing of over 30 million catalogues to customers in the UK and Ireland.

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Opinion BY Clinton Duncan

Drill, Baby, Drill

Masters is a new home improvement big-box store being launched by Australia’s leading supermarket chain, Woolworths in collaboration with the American chain Lowe’s. It will open with 150 stores kicking in at 13,500 square feet each. Interestingly, the category killer for home improvement in Australia, Bunnings, which Masters seeks to challenge, is owned by Woolworth’s rival and close second place in the supermarket space, Coles. So the competition couldn’t be more intereting. To create the new name and identity, Woolworths turned to Sydney-based Hulsbosch, who also designed the branding for Woolworths in 2008 (reviewed here on Brand New).

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Opinion BY Armin

April Fools: Home Depot’s Home Improvement

Update April 4, 2011: This post is an April Fools. All the design was executed by the talented Matt Stevens. Links to the domain www.myhomedepot.us won’t work as I have released the domain back to the registry. This is what www.homedepot.us looked like on Friday.

Established in 1978 with two 60,000-square-feet stores in Atlanta, GA, and stocking up to 25,000 different SKUs at the time, Home Depot is the world’s largest home improvement retailer, the fourth largest retailer in the U.S., it is ranked number 29 in the Fortune 500, and let’s face it, one of the coolest chain stores ever. Seriously. Where else can you walk out with a bag of screws, a door, and a riding mower? These days, Home Depot has 1,972 stores in the U.S., Canada, China, and Mexico. Each store averages a whopping 105,000 square feet plus an average of 23,000 square feet for the outside garden area. Quite amazingly too, for a retailer of that size, every employee on the floor I have ever asked a question to has been friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful — and I’ve been to a Home Depot in Brooklyn on a Sunday, they are unflappable. This week a picture surfaced on Twitter that indicated a new logo was being tested and, today, that change has been confirmed with the unveiling of a new logo and updated identity system.

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A B-Side BY lauren

Saxx Underwear

In its four years in business Vancouver-based Saxx Underwear, a men’s underwear company, has gone from Grad School startup to gaining national exposure when it appeared on the CBC show, Dragons’ Den. The brand was sold in 2010 to NoLimits Sportswear where it has since undergone a complete rebranding. Here’s a look, done by local Vancouver firm Toolbox Design.

A B-Side BY lauren

Monsoon

Founded in 1973, London-based women’s retailer Monsoon, who hold almost 133 stores across the UK, has recently revamped their identity.

Opinion BY Armin

A Penney for your Thoughts

First opened as a dry-goods store named the “Golden Rule” in Kemmerer, Wyoming by James Cash Penney in 1902, JCPenney today is a publicly-traded company with 11,000 department stores across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, mostly in shopping malls. Providing fairly decent middle-of-the-road merchandise, JCPenney is an extremely popular destination for finding affordable items without the top brand names attached — they develop many of their own brands. Yesterday, JCPenney announced that its transformation “to become America’s favorite shopping destination for discovering great styles at compelling prices” would be celebrated with a “bold new logo” that is set to go into effect at the end of this month. The new logo has been designed by Luke Langhus, a third-year graphic design student at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. That’s right, a company with $17.8 billion in revenue in 2010, has a logo designed by a student. Oh, and also, forget all that complicated casing, just call it and write it as “jcpenney.”

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