Landor updates Morrisons logo

Supermarket group Morrisons has revealed its fresh brand identity this week, with design by Landor Associates.

Morrisons_Logo.svg

Supermarket group Morrisons has revealed its fresh brand identity this week, with design by Landor Associates.

The logo retains the M symbol with its traditional yellow oval and Morrisons’ wording underneath, but is presented in a different style and format using a fresh combination of colours.

Additionally, Morrisons has scrapped its 30-year-old strapline ‘More reasons to shop at Morrisons’ and will focus its positioning around the line ‘The food specialist for everyone’, as well as highlighting its brand proposition, ‘Fresh for you every day’.

‘I think this represents one of those classic cases of brand evolution,’ says Landor executive creative director Peter Knapp. ‘It is very much a case of don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Morrisons is a brand with a lot of loyalty and a lot of good feeling in the north area of the country and is relatively unknown in other areas. We needed to find a balance of trying to get something that loyalists will see and admire and feel good about, as well as making something that is competitive, modern, contemporary and relevant without losing the affinity with very significant customers.

‘We used yellow in a very dramatic way. It is a colour that Morrisons has ownership of. Lots of people are trading heavily for green, but yellow is relevant. It signifies brightness and freshness’, Knapp adds.

Landor was appointed to work on the branding for the store’s overhaul in January following a paid creative pitch against Wolff Olins, which was handled by the Advertising Agency Register.

At the same time, retail design specialist 20/20 has been dropped from its work on Morrisons’ store interiors and were not invited to take part in the pitch.

The programme is being overseen by Morrisons chief executive Marc Bolland. Rebranding will start in July with advertising, fresh food packaging and some in-store signage. This will be followed by phased roll-out in the second half of the year, which will include vehicles, carrier bags and making in-store fresh food preparation more visible.

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Comments
  • Gregg November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    This redesign has just taken the Morrisons brand back 70 years. The previous brand was a ‘No- Frills’ identity but this redesign has done nothing for them.

    Its not being loyal, those who know the brand might just like to see a little class, elegance creep into the store. This design does none of that. The reasoning the Landor give in its defence applies to nothing that is the new logo. I’m very disappointed over this design.

  • rugged November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    design weak

  • brian November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Yeah, the logo is horrible. I can’t believe that the creative director would even put his name with that logo. It looks like my grandma hopped on her Windows 3.1 computer and played around in MS paint. Its THAT bad…..

  • shadrach November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I think it’s a good jumping off point. You can’t tell a story in a mark. How Landor will handle the rest of it’s visual communications will determine whether it’s a successful rebranding.

  • Mark November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I agree with what you say here but like any major company such as morrisons there are limits to what they want. They have built this business for over 100 years and to see a logo destroy the tradition they have built for so many years would be a catastrophie. It is mainly down to how they will apply the branding that will make it stand out more. Hopefully they will use a bit of integrity in it because I know they are capable of doing that.

  • akrok November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    unbelievable bad, how many concept did they really made? and this was the stongest. hah…talk about runing on low creativity level. by the way, how much did this 5 min logo cost?

    ciao,
    akrok

  • Anthony November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    ‘We used yellow in a very dramatic way’

    err… you mean in the SAME way as the previous logo, surely?

    In which ways is the mark ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’? it looks as if was designed in the early 70s.

    Supplementing it with a bileous shade of green cheapens it significantly rather than making it look ‘fresh’ – it takes it into real ‘poundshop’ territory.

    The old logotype wasn’t great, but it had a weird sort of presence – this is a retrograde step.

  • Diana November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    If the aim of the Morrisons rebranding was to present itself as the same group with a few cosmetic changes, then the rebranding is a success. If the objective was to transform the brand into one that is competitive, modern and contemporary then the new identity fails completely.

  • James November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Couldn’t agree more with the previous comment. The immediate look and feel of the logo is that it was done by the work experience kid and then the usual “explaination” of brand values applied with lots of jargon to justify a weak and uninspiring design.

  • Steve Acton November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Seen this all before – looks like they forgot to load the fonts with the job and the rip has used a default typeface – wasted many meters of bromide in exactly the same way myself over the years! – but not for as much money!

  • Aaron Butler November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I can only imagine that Landor had a hard time getting approval on a design that was anything but traditional. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during this presentation, “and for the finalé”… This design shouldn’t have left the junior designers layout pad.

  • robin walton November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    What a disapointing logo, feels dated already. They (Landor) have disgarded everything that was memorable about Morrisons and created a weak and forgettable logo which lacks originality and presence. But lets keep an open mind and give Landor a chance, after all, its one thing viewing a new logo on a white background and quite another seeing it as part of in store graphics, packaging, pos, etc…

  • lenka November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I am not an expert,but I am also not very impressed with the logo update.For me the idea of freshness is just not beeing projected by selected colors. I think typography is a strong element here and could have been used more advantageously.

  • Linzi November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I agree that this new identity is very disappointing. The old strapline “more reasons to shop at morrisons” is catchy and works really well unlike the new one which is not catchy is the slightest. As for the logo, is does nothing for me either. The type used is unattractive and I much prefer the other one. I’m sure there will be many more which hold the same opinion as me.

  • Nick November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    This fails on so many levels. It’s not memorable, timeless or well crafted. It reeks of compromise and therefore lack of strength in conviction. The colour combination is weak, the typography poor. The only place it succeeds is making the current identity look good!

  • Dan November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    a missed opportunity- not necessarily by Landor, but time will tell- so until it is passed into brand legend I am using it as an example to my design students of some persons closed grey minds who want to inflict blandness into our daily lives. NB always shop at waitrose- great graphics, service and well mannered trolleys.

  • Suzanne November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Question: since when is a logo a brand? It’s all very well to poo-poo a mark – but please don’t confuse a mark with brand communications. As some have mentioned, it IS about everything else around it. And anyone who has worked for a client as large as this (and understands brand vs. design) will agree, the logo is often the thing that is changed the least, and any solution is always through compromise with a client who may/may not be willing to make bold moves. In the end, it’s the overall experience that matters – it’s what customer’s truly interact with. Sadly, Morrison’s have opted to launched the logo before the rest – but I doubt this was Landor’s preference, as it limits them from showing the true scope of their work. Seems this would be obvious to anyone who knows anything about design – but maybe I’m confusing graphics people with those who actually understand strategic design – and what a programme like this really involves.

  • Chris November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I am stunned by how bad this redesigned logo is. Lost for words. I know the company well. There was so much potential for a rebranding of this company.

  • stephen halpin November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    on first look, I tend to agree with most of the comments – it’s not a fantastically inspiring and stand out identity….but does it realy need to be??

    I think that once this is viewed on a large scale on signage, POS, trucks, uniforms and on packaging, we will see that this could indeed help to move Morrisons on from being a brash, cost driven retailer towards the fresh, less brash, and more modern retailer that it has suggested it would like to be.

    But it’ll all be in the execution…which I will watch with interest.

  • Neil Whitehead November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    What!!! First those dull stamps and now this! Have I been transported back to 1973? By the way, bananas ‘own’ yellow.

  • Peter Rose November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Was this launched on April 1st?

  • Tracy Iveson November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I work in the packaging industry, I personally think the logo looks pathetic along side other brand names.
    On small labels it will not STAND OUT.
    It really isn’t a significant change from the latest age old out of date logo.

  • Johnny November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I asked my dad what he thought all about this and he said he couldn’t care less. He laughed when he saw the new logo and how much it cost.

    He designed the original logo in a few minutes as part of his job at the T&A.

  • Cathel Kerr November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    More reasons not to shop at Morrisons

  • Mark R November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Yellow does not signify freshness. Many things that are supposed to be green turn yellow when they stop being fresh.

  • Chris November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I work for morrisons and have seen the new logo in a staff letter. I am more worried about the new uniform we are getting. How can they match a uniform to the logo colours which i think will be on the new badges, without making us look like something from Asda. Hope the new chief exec looks at all the things he is changing and how they go together….think harder homer !!

  • Tom November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    HAHA What the hell is this! I shop at morrisons regularly and definitely think it needs rebranding as it isn’t a bad supermarket but just suffers from a dated look. But a five year old could have developed something better than this. I sincerely hope people in the morrisons management read comments like this and have a major MAJOR rethink!

  • Jonathan Salem Baskin November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    The logo is perfect in its utter irrelevance to the ways in which Morrisons customers experience brand. The business premise is sound and could be competitive, but the approach to the brand (which includes the inane TV commercials) makes it come across as generic and inert. I’ve written about it a bit at DIM BULB at htttp://dimbulb.typepad.com.

  • David November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    It resembles a lemon which has gone mouldy, for a new image, it is very reminisent of a 1950’s image, a real move backwards, rather than forwards – back to a time when Britian was still recovering from rationing, had poorly designed products, and was full of new artificial additives. Inspired, no, retro with chic, no, expensive – well I dare say the logo was, but it looks cheap and nasty, rather than cheap and value – bad move Morisons.

  • SmartFolio November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    i agree, well said!!!!!

  • Peter November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    As a shareholder and shopper I am horrified. It reminds me of Somerfield …….

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