I’m working on a project with my interns that helps them build their writing skills. Here’s the third one, by Natalia: a recap on the new ZARA rebrand.
ZARA: where fast fashion meets marked up prices. Personally, I never fully got the hype of ZARA, and that’s okay. I like that they bring European style to the world, and I dislike the quality and price of the clothes. As a brand, I’ve never really given them much thought.
ZARA is Spanish owned and operated, but you wouldn’t really know that by the look of their previous or new logo. Both logos use a serif typeface with high contrast in the strokes. The old logo was kerned spaciously and almost squished down with a small x-height. The newer logo has a much higher x-height and is kerned to overlap the letters.
As more and more companies move towards very similar minimalist logos, perhaps ZARA knows what they’re doing. Adam Sandoval specifies that, “…a lot of fashion brands are moving to a boring san serif so to double down on a high contrast serif seems like a good way to stand out.” Surprisingly, it’s not even the new look that’s making the rebrand unfavorable to some. RichardMarazziDesign points out that they should have “at least match the angle of the Z to the A,” which makes it seem as the logo was not fully refined before being finalized.
As a big fan of warping type and overlays, the new ZARA logo should excite me on principle, but really kind of falls short. I will acknowledge that there is interesting overlaps, and the contrast in the strokes that makes it visually dynamic. So far, there hasn’t been any further collateral work with the new logo, so it will be interesting to see if the brand will really change all that much. In the end, ZARA will continue making major bucks from neck scarves and jumpsuits, and for now the only change will be the logo on the tag.
Source: Under Consideration