Starbucks Gone Retro

By Guest Column Joshua Hill —— Bio and Archives April 16, 2008

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The Starbucks brand is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. The green logo is easily one of the most beloved, and similarly hated, logos in the world. Starbucks Coffee; you either love it or you hate it!

So the question is asked; why would you change your logo? That seems to be the question, after Starbucks changed their resplendent green logo to Brown this past week, as Starbucks hearkens back to their 1971 origins. The logo isn’t just brown either, but has reverted to showcasing the twin-tailed mermaid within the medallion, originally inspired by a Norse woodcut. This is the second time in the past three years that the brown logo has returned, the first being back in 2006 to celebrate the chains’ 35 years in business. But this time they’re heading back in to history to help change a long-held opinion about Starbucks Coffee. The new Pike Place blend of coffee is Starbucks' attempt to create a coffee that isn’t, as so many critics claim, “burnt.” And with the new blend, comes the new logo, which is planned to stay for about eight weeks. Rob Giampietro of New York design firm Giampietro + Smith was called in to comment by Business Week, and he described the throw back as like baseball teams having their players don the old fashioned uniforms. "Now that Howard Schultz is back at the helm, this is definitely a nostalgia effort and a strong push to get back to the core values of the company," he says. And while the throwback to the brown is engendering a lot of publicity, experts are quick to remind Starbucks not to stay with the brown. "As a color it's so much less distinguished than the green, and the green conveys both a friendlier and more upscale image," says Giampietro. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the new blend of coffee, check out Mahalo Daily’s short video on it. A Geek’s-Geek from Melbourne, Australia, Josh is an aspiring author with dreams of publishing his epic fantasy, currently in the works, sometime in the next 5 years. A techie, nerd, sci-fi nut and bookworm