Old is gold – Zara rebranding

When it comes to change, we can all agree that it’s welcome in the world where it always gets noticed and where we follow innovations in one way or another. But at the same time tricky and interesting theme is the rebranding of world-renowned brands. Through one of these big changes also went the major Spanish brand Zara. In fact, at the core of Zara lies its changing nature, starting with the change of its name…  Zara brand originates from its first name: „Zorba“!In the year 1975. Zara’s creator, Amancio Ortega, was in search of the right name for his first fashion boutique about to be open in La Coruña. He came up with the name „Zorba“ after watching the movie Zorba The Greek from 1964. Without thinking that he was about to create the historical brand and by thinking that he was choosing just a random name for a fashion boutique, he didn’t notice that two blocks away from his store there was a bar by the same name! Following the visit of the bar owner who spoke about potential cofusion brought on by two Zorbas happened a name change of Ortega’s fashion boutique. Because they have already made molds for letters of the store sign, they started thinking about potential name changes using similar letters. This way they came up with the name Zara!  Zara logotype is designed to highlight the simplicity and elegance of Ortega’s products. Through its elegance, this brand achieved strength and visual recognition of its corporate identity. The brand’s founder refused to listen to ideas and recommendations for a „more complicated“ logo. He wanted it to be composed of four Latin letters that are recognizable all around the globe and that send a message of this new brand with affordable prices and products. The black color of logotype exudes luxury, quality, elegance, simplicity and makes people wish to own Zara’s pieces of clothing.    Even then, Zara’s logo was criticized for its simplicity. It was called generic, a cliche, without a creative touch… Today, we are so used to the recognition of Zara, not only for its fashion pieces but also its logotype. We even follow the online debates caused by recent alterations made to this logo. We are sure that it caught the attention of vast masses. Now there is a question, are these changes positive or negative? They’ve awakened criticism from a large number of people and inspired designers to offer new and better solutions.New ZARA’s brand logoZara’s logotype redesigned in 2019. by french agency Baron & Baron , where letters overlap each other, got a lot of criticism from famous designers. Rebranding brings the minimalistic type of letters, similar to the logotype from 2011. where the letters were printed like block signs separated with big spaces between them. The new logotype represents an opposite approach to the last one. Instead of big spaces between the letters, they are packed, so close together that some parts overlap and others even merge. Details are also a bit too much. They make disproportional curves with letters Z and R, and then create confusion with overlapping A and R. Pillars carry their weight, while in contrast, thin parts create complete disbalance of the whole logo.Serif-like edges are tangled, which feels like they are fighting to prevail. There is no so-called negative space (free space). Famos German typo-designer Erik Spiekermann made a statement that this is the worst logotype he has ever seen! He got himself thinking if this was even created by human hand or by a robot that will replace people and their functions. By analyzing Spikemans statements we can conclude that this logotype carries a poor approach without human creativity and emotion.  This logo change has inspired different approaches, so today we can find recommendations like those from fantastic typo master Moshik Nadav:Followed by the humanistic approach of Fabio Basile:Because these kinds of logo changes fit into the group of ‘Love it or hate it’ and because there isn’t a happy medium between our opinions, we are introducing you to several examples of logotype changes made for other big brands.