Cheap and colourful look for Ica Basic

Ica Basic is Swedish grocery retailer Ica's own brand for discount products. It was introduced in 2018 and covered here at the time.

Last autumn (in November or earlier) the brand got an all-new look, created by the design agency Silver. The packaging is still quite basic, but the new system brings in a variety of bright colours that dominate the packaging.

Logo round-up: January 2019

A late-but-big logo round-up for January, featuring a multitude of big rebrands. The new logos for Slack and Zara probably gained the most attention. There were also some lateral refreshes for big brands like Wells Fargo, Dish, Univision and Aer Lingus.

Carré Noir tweaks design for food brand Fleury Michon

Fleury Michon is a French brand for a variety of refrigerated food products, such as sliced meats an ready-made meals. Around October last autumn, it launched a fresh new look, created by French agency Carré Noir.

Carré Noir were also behind the previous redesign for brand which was introduced as late as 2015. This suggests their previous design was an evolutionary step to renew the brand without loosing familiarity. The new look wants bring in more emotion with packages redesigned to be transparent and less industrial.

Refreshed Quaker Oats logo

Back in early 2012, there were numerous reports about the Quaker Oats man slimming down and getting a new look. Well, last autumn he got a refresh once again, but there wasn't really any reporting on it. The redrawn Quaker man is barely distinguishable from his predecessor, but has slightly fluffier hair and the wind has caught his handkerchief.

He has also been freed from the previous pennant and now appears in front of an oat field on packaging. The wordmark has been redrawn and now appears arched. This is all part of an effort to position Quaker as a brand for healthy products.

Sat.1 Gold launches new look with gold lining

Sat.1 Gold is a TV channel from the major German broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1, showing classic TV series for a primarily female audience. On January 17, the channel launched a new look with a refreshed logo, created by the in-house agency ProSiebenSat.1 Creative Solutions in collaboration with Lama Design and Wielandt GmbH. They also introduced a new slogan "Watch with Your Heart" (Mit dem Herzen sehen) reflecting the melodramatic nature of some of the programmes.

We covered the launch of Sat.1 Gold here six years ago. The refreshed logo is a more competently executed version of its predecessor with more pronounced rounded letters. The graphics package expands the range of colours used, but also manages to look luxurious with the gold colour used as a "lining" that doesn't dominate the screen.

From 1999: Intel Play by Sapient

Intel Play was a line of advanced toys developed by toy maker Mattel and chip maker Intel. According to a press release, the toy line would combine "the power of PCs and the 'magic' of toys into a new generation of interactive play".

The line was announced on February 3, 1999, initially consisting of two toys that were both PC peripherals: the X3 Microscope and the Me2Cam, a microscope and webcam, respectively.

The brand identity for this toy line was developed by Sapient, one of the hottest marketing consultancies in the dot-com era. It included a friendly "Play" logotype and a special version of Intel's trademark audio logo.

Leveraging the tech-oriented Intel brand to market a line of toys is a curious strategic choice. Presumably, the Intel brand gave the toys some credibility to parents as having educational value. Microsoft had launched a similar PC-related toy called ActiMates a few years earlier. Scattered press reports suggests the Intel Play products were well reviewed, but they didn't succeed financially and the brand was retired around 2002.