Is Walmart’s Spark logo strong enough to stand on its own? Headquarters thinks so.
In a consumer culture filled with brand names, only a relative handful of companies can get away with making the fearless decision to leave out their names and rely solely on their logos. Nike swoosh and the golden arches of McDonald’s can stand on their own, for example. The same goes for Apple and Target. target.
And, at some point in the future, Walmart hopes to join that club, too — at least, if its latest brand refresh is to be believed.
On Monday, the retail colossus unveiled the first major update to its brand assets since 2008. The changes are subtle – mainly an enlargement of its font as well as some color tweaks – but the simplicity disguises more ambitious.
Speaking to ADWEEK, Walmart VP of Creative David Hartman acknowledged that the visual improvements are incremental. “We’re building on the strengths that the customer recognizes at Walmart – we’re strengthening those strengths,” he said.
Subtlety aside, however, “we want to be able to build and strengthen the equity that we have in Spark,” Hartman said, “so that it can ultimately be a standalone symbol for our brand “.
At first glance, the changes made by the design department are not easy to spot. So here they are, broken down by typography and the brand badge itself.
Walmart lettering
Hartman’s team spent many hours in the company’s archives, where they came across photos of founder Sam Walton wearing his brand-named trucker cap. Walton wore the cap to emphasize the company’s human roots. This hat, now in the Smithsonian, featured a bolder typeface and the updated wordmark marks a return to that more assertive visual presence.
“I like what they did, I think it’s pretty good,” said Thomas Ordahl, founder of brand consultancy OrdahlCo. The bolder look “is more human, tapping into the Sam Walton connection,” he said. “With all the changes in technology and AI, you want to maintain a human connection with your consumers.”
While the changes emphasize restraint, Ordahl believes it’s the right step for a company of Walmart’s size and stature, which is unlikely to make sweeping changes.
“It’s a journey for them,” he said. “If they want to start modernizing and bringing more warmth to their brand experience, that’s one piece.”
The Walmart logo
The spark, like his, was muscular, kerned to reduce the space between the beams. Walmart also moved to more saturated colors (True Blue and Spark Yellow, in company parlance.) The changes should make the logo “a little more effective at any scale,” Hartman said.
In the long term, management hopes that a more imposing profile will also allow the logo to stand on its own, without the Walmart name, in certain contexts. “Especially when you look at how the brand appears in a digital context, on the app tile, on the site, on the home page, that’s definitely the direction we’re going in,” Hartman said.
It’s a laudable goal, of course, but Clark Goolsby, creative director of Chase Design Group, said a visual change is only the first step.
“As a designer, I can create assets that have the potential to become iconic, but it’s up to the company to make them iconic,” he said. “If their goal is to use it without their wordmark,” Goolsby continued, the brand “must be willing to invest significant time, be faithfully consistent, and make a myriad of prints to achieve that goal.”
