Fashion brands all seem to be using the same font | Hacker News Reader

Fashion brands all seem to be using the same font

bloomberg.com

58 pointsValentineC26 comments

Since the article doesn’t directly give an answer, I’ll assert that it’s a result of the proliferation of screens and what younger generations are used to seeing. When selecting a typeface to modify for a brand, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to not feel comic-sans type objections to anything with a little character.

I predict the future of branding will be comprised mainly of symbols (logos). Names will all be in a similar, device friendly, typeface as we see here.

Logo/type for logo design often goes through trends, See:

https://www.logolounge.com/articles/2006-logo-trends

https://www.logolounge.com/articles/2017-logo-trends

Which are often correlated to "fashion cycles" which are reactionary:

bell bottoms -> skinny jeans

Tight, form fitting -> Loose relaxed

We are currently hitting the "web companies love sans-serif and watercolor people" moment:

https://slack.com/

(there are others, I'm sure you can find)

So fashion brands shifting will last 10-15 years, and then they will probably switch back towards "traditional".

I wonder if companies will ever try to get emojis for their logos?

This happened in every other industry for very interesting but vague reasons, I suggest a lot of the same behaviour is at play in fashion.

See the great documentary 'Helvetica' [1] for an exploration of that issue. (I couldn't believe that I was going to watch a documentary about a font. But I did, and it changed my view of a lot of things)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica_(film)

Very meta: the fashion of fashion.

I am not renowned for my sense of fashion or of marketing, so this is probably wrong, but I would have thought that this means there's no better time to pick a distinctive font.

It is not clear to me why it would be important for one font to work everywhere: if you can get trademark protection on one, can one not do so for several variants? I recall an interview with one of Google's early employees saying that he was initially aghast at the idea of Google Doodles: your logo represents your brand, or something to that effect. Maybe that sort of one-true-logo dogma is behind this trend.

Uggh. I dislike the new Burberry logo. All these brands seemed to be moving to Gotham, Futura, or Proxima Nova.

My guess is that is because the typeface has to look good in print, signage, large screens, small screens, stitched into cloth, and stamped into buttons.

Has anyone worked in textiles and know the tradeoffs of different typefaces?

hands down the worst is how similar tommy hilfiger is to stussy

Agreed. The new Burberry logo is pretty awful in my opinion. I get how the cursive "London, England" script could come across as too pretentious (and these days, younger folks may not be able to read it), but the original Burberry text was pretty timeless and classic. Now it looks completely bland.

> younger folks may not be able to read it

You're joking, right? Those letter forms aren't really all that cursive. If kids can pick up that a tall loop is a lowercase L, then they can read that. It's probably only a problem with readers for whom Roman is not their native character set -- reading handwritten Japanese is probably an order of magnitude harder for me than printed text.

That said, does Coca-Cola's swirl come off as pretentious? I think there's a lot to be said for continuity in branding, and Coca-Cola is certainly a master of branding and marketing.

I don't think GP is joking in that context. They're probably not implying that all younger people are not going to be able to read it, but it's certainly going be a non-zero amount.

The introduction of computing systems has done incredible things with normalizing representations of the written language. Most text read by all people today are confined down to a small number of typefaces. There is far less exposure to the diverse variety of even the non-cursive written word that is unique to each individual. If we have a population that not only no longer learns how to write in cursive, combined with the fact that they hand-write disproportionately lower than their previous generations, I think we're going to be surprised by its side-effects.

I had a childhood friend who couldn't read an analog clock, and that was in the late 90s.

I understand the utility but am completely mystified by these redesigns. The results look like those generic, standardized tobacco packaging labels or even Squarespace website titles. In each case- Burberry, Rimowa, YSL & DVF- I really love the original logos. They seem to capture so much about the brand and reflect high-end quality. I can't imagine why these companies would want to homogenize their branding in this way? The article doesn't really explain it well..

Yes, the article doesn’t seem to explain it at all. I think it’s just chasing what’s fashionable right now - we saw this with the glossy 3D fad a decade ago, and now rebrands that happened back then now look hopelessly dated (like Xerox for example). Hopefully brands like these will go back to something more like their original logos when everybody gets bored with the current (boring) sans-serif logotype trend.

It does make me wonder whether there has been any shift in the management of these companies, where they are no longer run by people with any commitment to any sort of brand or design integrity? Or did that happen long ago and the logos were just holdovers from a different time?

Maybe I’m just caught up in false, romantic notions and these companies have always just been mass-producing corporate entities desperately trying to do whatever is trendy to appeal to the widest audience, whilst creating an illusion of exclusivity to justify massive profit margins?

> no longer run by people with any commitment to any sort of brand or design integrity

Or they mean really well, and tried their very best, and this is what they came up with. Or too many people had a say in it, and it averaged out at bland.

The thing that I found worse than the boring fonts is the change from "London, England", to "London England". I would "respect" "London, England" written in Comic Sans more than "London England" in any font. It just gives off this "the lights are on, but nobody's home" vibe to me.

I do not think putting the brand on a textile has much relevance. I own designer pieces and they have little visible branding. Sure, engraving sans serif on a button is easier than serif, but if you have watched documentaries like Helvetica, the real reason is likely legibility.

Branding textiles either visibly on the outside or on small tags inside is where most of all high fashion textiles derive value. How is that not relevant?

In fact when sold to “last season” liquidators many high fashion labels are cut or removed to indicate loss of value

At least to me, the value proposition is different. I do not buy much avant-garde, so most of my pieces look quite ordinary. The difference to say, H&M jacket, is the durability and materials. I do not think these are exclusive to just designer brands, so basically, designer clothing buys me quality assurance. In my perspective, I could spend the time to find brands which consistently produce good garments, or go to second-hand stores to look for bargains, but that takes too much time. That is, I'd buy a garment from Kering subsidiaries just because Farfetch says it's authentic. But, for me at least, I would be okay for all branding to be stripped away before the garment ships. This is pretty much for safety reasons while I am wearing the cloth.

I believe everything has to do with the fashion overreaction to mobile. I work in the sector, kinda, and everyone is worried about the gen z coming of age and into expendable income territory, since they're not just digital native but also (almost) mobile centric.

They all moving with breakneck speed to make sure all their branding and sales channel fit with the mobile trend, and logo have some unique issues (like not being responsive) that hamper legibility and would make them feel out of place in a responsive-style website

Open for example rimowa site now on mobile and you'll see the logo fit perfectly with the home other components.

The limiting factor as you say is legibility, but not the logo itself, it's the mobile experience that doesn't allow large style permutation on the design language. The logo here becomes slave of that.

This article doesn't seem to answer the question. It just asserts, without evidence, that "luxury is about no-nonsense boldness." Why wasn't this true in the past?

You're taking that line out of context and rephrasing it.

"That said, the overall trend is hard to miss: Luxury isn’t connoted with fussy extras; no-nonsense boldness is the rule. “Spartan solutions have been rampant in all areas of design,” Gardner says."

In other words, the current trend is to use no-nonsense boldness to connote luxury. It is explicitly described as a trend. Fashions change, and the article doesn't deny that or claim to explain why. It might have something to do with increasing typographical literacy among the public, or with the popularity of authentic, no-frills, "vintage industrial" design.

The new Burberry logo would look right at home on a pack of hot dogs.

Trends in fashion are changing since events like the Panama Papers. Ostentatious displays of wealth and luxury are no longer in vogue. Many luxury clients have obtained their wealth through some degree or fraudulent activity or are operating in societies marked by high degrees of inequality.

Demonstrating status to the street pleb is no longer fashionable or desirable. Demonstrating status to your fellow elites is - and they recognise brands and styles.

Luxury brands know their clientele extremely well, and the logo changes represent all this.

It's not just fashion brands, Bloomberg's entire website is "using the same" font. Number 8 on HN right now is Inter UI.

They're emulating the success of PINK and HOLLISTER, maybe? Those brands have been using plain block letters on blah garments for years.

I doubt it. Hollister sells $32 jeans. No one in the luxury space wants to copy that.

They are probably copying Tom Ford which uses Gotham. Tom Ford sells $4000 leather bags.

And PINK sells sweat pants with really ugly giant lettering. That's the font the high end is emulating.

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