Collectivist culture and caring coffee

Time magazine (dated March 14th) carries a short piece on the trend towards ‘kinder logos’, previewing a paper to be published in The Journal of Consumer Marketing. Starbucks’ new logo redesign conforms to this trend. Its simplification involves scaling-up the curved forms of the twin-tailed siren (now green) and dropping the angular company name and word ‘coffee’ altogether. This is coincident with Starbucks’ plans to sell more non-coffee products and to expand business in Asian markets like China, which according to the paper “have cultures that tend to be more interdependent and collectivist” and so “prefer rounded shapes as they represent harmony”. Western countries with “independent or individualistic” cultures are supposedly less inclined this way.

It’s an intriguing idea, but will bear closer scrutiny regarding the ways in which the researchers differentiate between East and West on the basis of cultural ‘collectivism’, which like most impressive words is somewhat nebulous and hard to define. The liberal democracies of the West are, arguably, politically collectivist by way of free elections and the nature of governance by collective consent of the people. And China, whilst one of the few remaining Communist states, moved towards state capitalism in the late 1970s, reversing the collectivisation of its agriculture and introducing free enterprise by privatising farm ownership. Moreover, the research on the correlation between interdependent mindsets and preference for round logos has been conducted on an individual basis. To characterise, for example, the 2.5 billion people of China and India as culturally collectivist seems quite a sweeping statement.

Whilst Starbucks’ logo simplification is a rational move that allows the company to branch out from coffee products, perhaps the significance of the change in relation to the trend for rounder logos is overstated. Paul Rand proposed that “a logo derives its meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolises, not the other way around”. Ultimately Starbucks will succeed by continuing to provide quality coffee and friendly service to its customers, reinforcing the positive connotations of its logo, rather than the adoption of a design trend. A good example Rand provides for the transient relationship between particular forms and their connotations is the swastika. In European countries it is largely associated with Nazism and its evils, supplanting its more ancient origins as a sacred Buddhist and Hindu symbol. To which of these views the angular forms of the swastika speaks surely depends on your culture.

Recognising that a logo’s meaning is not substantially derived from what it looks like does not mean that it can be changed spontaneously. People are possessive about logos, take comfort in their familiarity and place trust in what they represent. When Gap adopted an entirely different logo in 2010 that looked like it was produced from a design template in Microsoft Publisher, public hostility caused the company to revert to their previous logo in a week. Distinctiveness, visibility and memorability were momentarily sacrificed, stupefyingly so that the idea that the exercise was merely a publicity stunt has some traction for those who want to believe the best in the designers responsible. Starbucks is wise to keep changes to their logo incremental when 40 years of brand heritage are at stake.

A logo is a company’s calling card. It should be elegant and distinct, allowing that company to be easily identified and recognised. To overhaul a logo because it is failing to meet these criteria is a valid call. Additionally, simplifying and abstracting a logo because of business expansion into new fields is also valid. However, what a logo connotes about the qualities of a business should originate from business practises, goods and services: tangible things. In this sense if a company wishes to appear friendlier, changing their logo is not a long-term solution and demonstrates a lack of understanding of how logos gain credibility and value. Forget the lower-case type and rounded corners, a substantive solution is to pay all employees a fair wage, renounce monopolistic practises and reduce the negative impact on the environment. That is what truely results in a company logo that says “we care.”