The first thing that jumped out to me when I saw this is that the new logo looks so much more balanced! The counter space of the E has been expanded and made consistent, and the counter space of the A has been expanded as well. These subtle changes go a long way to increasing readable, especially at small sizes.
Analysing further, I realised that the overall width of the unit has been retained, but the height to width ration has increased, thereby giving a lot more room to optically increase the logotype and enhance legibility. There are subtle changes made the arms of the K to make them taper a little more. The kerning has been made consistent, the yellow ellipse has been defined better and gives the logotype a lot of breathing room. The new refined colour palette looks good too!
Though subtle, these changes do make a huge difference to the over all form of the logo.
To me, this is a perfect redesign for a brand as Iconic as IKEA. The colours are the form of the logo have very strong recall value. With this redesign, I feel like the issues with the old identity have been fixed.
But, I am a designer, and a typographer, and I appreciate these nuances and subtleties. I was pleasantly surprised that this was actually happening! So I did some reading:
The new logo, designed by Joakim Jerring from Stockholm’s Seventy agency.
According to Jerring, the updated logo was the result of close collaboration with IKEA for the best part of a year. As part of its brief, IKEA wanted the new logo to increase its legibility on both digital and physical domains. It also wanted the design to avoid re-registration of the trademark.
Sure, the new identity is fairly similar to the old, but the objective of the redesign is achieved, and for the most part, majority of the viewers will be none the wiser. To me, that’s success!
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