Capn Design Archives: The New UPS

The New UPS

March 27, 2003

Two days ago, UPS unveiled a new logo. The last logo was designed in 1960 and is one of the best, most recognizable logos ever created. Here are the two logos, old and new, side by side.

Although the new one is infused with color, the font is crappy, the swoosh is a joke and the gradient just looks dumb. Although I think this is completely unnecessary, the UPS people clearly disagree.

"UPS is a vastly different company today than most people realize," said UPS Chairman and CEO Mike Eskew. "Today we are bringing our look up to speed with our capabilities."

Okay Mike. I still think that there was no need to spend $20 million (according to adweek) on a campaign that will not at all improve their branding. And while we're on that subject, I'd like to discuss this "brown" slogan. Megnut took a stab at it, and I'd like to say that when I think of brown, at least when the word is said outloud, I think of crap. So "What can Brown do for you?" does not have the meaning that they had anticipated. As Megnut said, it is very forced. No had referred to them as Brown; they are trying to force the nickname on us.

None of this will effect my usage of UPS, but I don't think it's going to help and it is definitely unnecessary.

Comments (1 comments so far)

Comment #1:

Because I use UPS quite a bit in my shipping department, and their rates go up EVERY January by 3% as a minimum, I am appalled that my company and my clients are going to have to pay more for freight because UPS wants to spend $20M to repaint trucks/planes and re-uniform their employees. It won't COST UPS a dime, we'll all end up paying for the NEW BROWN!!!

Posted by Leisa on May 21, 2003 at 3:24PM

Trackback

Trackback Link: http://www.capndesign.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/18