In March Starbucks will celebrate its 40th anniversary and rollout a “new” logo (not actually new—a stripping away of the word ring, leaving the familiar siren unchanged but now in green).
Howard Schultz, Starbucks’ chairman and CEO, writes in an announcement on the company’s website, “we’ve given her a small but meaningful update to ensure that the Starbucks brand continues to embrace our heritage in ways that are true to our core values and that also ensure we remain relevant and poised for future growth.” By removing text from the logo, “international ubiquity” and an exploration into non-coffee business ventures must have been listed on the team’s creative brief. But overall, reaction from the rank and file has not been positive. A typical comment on the site reads, “This gold card user isn’t impressed!”
Mike Peck, senior creative manager at Starbucks and his creative team admitted modifying the brand identity “was the project of a lifetime.” The logo was broken down into four main parts—color, shape, typeface and the siren. Peck and his team found the answer in simplicity.
In 1971, the company began selling coffee beans and spices in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. By 1992, the company became publicly traded.