Friday, October 26, 2007

Holiday Inn revised

Ah, the re-branding never ends. The latest major corporate victim of rebranding: Holiday Inn, the old standby of roadside mo/hotels. Everyone has seen their old logo by side of many exits. The old logo was very fifties - reverse italics, bubbly-script font, and the starburst. Trying to get away from the fifties, and also (I imagine) trying to ditch their lower-middle-class image, Holiday Inn has gone the Hilton/Embassy Suites route of having one big letter (the GIANT H) and then the name smaller under it.

I can't say I really agree with this decision whole-heartedly. Where the new green is nicely cheery, I miss the reverse italics, and frankly, the GIANT H has been done to death (see Hilton, Embassy Suites, etc.) Its nice that they didn't go with a totally boring san-serif, but the font is still pretty meh - they needed an update, but this is more just a change for no reason than an update. I wish they had kept the starburst in some capacity, because it can be such a nice design element. The GIANT H .. well, its a giant H. With a gradient. Um, yeah.

Its not a terrible re-branding, but its far from good. If you're going to re-brand, know exactly what you're doing - and why. And for heaven sake, make it obvious!

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