JKR

Grateful to the ever excellent Brand New website for the analysis of the new Argos identity. At a glance, the identity has been cleaned up – from the original one could intuit a smile, and also a sense of speed (appropriate to the somewhat magical pace at which ordered items appear at the counter). This has been simplified to a cleaner font and a cheerful smile. So, more single-minded. One could argue that the old version was closer to Amazon’s smiling dynamic arrow. But somehow by simplifying things, the similarities become actually stronger in the mind’s eye.

What do you think of it? A cleaner design? Or an opportunity to be truly distinctive that has not been fully taken? Argos has to appeal to a huge spectrum of shoppers, but mass appeal need not lack a particular personality, as (for me) the Amazon logo proves. Perhaps the brief was to clean up the identity system, rather than create a catalyst for change.