Discussion

By Joe Treacy on Nov 13, 2023

In response to WhatTheythink carrying an 11/13 summary of the Print rebranding critique, I read the story in Print, and would like to offer my own “designer’s opinion”.

As someone who has noticed, liked and have been perfectly happy with the Lester Beall IP logo my entire career (as it pre-dated me), I find the rebrand very noticeable in what the new symbol fails to contribute. I happen to agree with the author that the rebrand is problematic, but for a reason not stated directly enough in the Print piece.

I think that the main thing the rebrand design does is alienate existing customers by not providing a visual “bridge” from the past design familiarity.

While the new symbol does continue to feature “tree”, the design transition itself is both too harsh and less crystal clear.

It’s in failing to do that simple thing that throws away the brand equity of the former design.

Interestingly, the Beall symbol itself isn’t really the problem. As we know, the visual representation of a brand name doesn’t necessarily have to be the literal company name spelling. Designers can take liberties.

The very length of the word “International” especially in all caps, is a bigger problem. And as we see in the rebrand, resetting it in caps and lowercase doesn’t really solve that.

Could “International” been converted to “Int’l” and the Beall symbol made to be the apostrophe? Perhaps. It would’ve further shortened the shorthand.

If the brand’s emphasis is shifting to cardboard, should the word “Paper” remain in the logo at all?
Removing “Paper” (similar to how Edible recently removed “Arrangements” from its logo to open up more horizons) would seem to help emphasize the IP symbol more.

In today’s “everything @“ world, discarding a “circled IP” symbol also seems untimely. If the circle offends with its harshness, there are many ways to soften that, such as converting the circle to an obround. That’s also a differentiator in many typeface designs that’s very effective, and that’s a design trick often used in design of many @ symbols themselves.