Brand Newish: Eight O'Clock Coffee

This week I’m going to try something new. I seem to have collected a number of pairings that illustrate rebrandings, but most of them don’t really qualify as Pr*tty or Sh*tty, so thus far I’ve had trouble finding a home for them.

Rebrandings are, of course, the domain of my good pals over at Brand New, but the pairings I’ll feature this week are either too old and/or too irrelevant to have been covered there, or on their B-Sides companion blog. So hopefully they won’t mind if a tread around the perimeter of their territory for a few days and go ahead and show them here.

I’ll offer up a few comments, but otherwise I’ll open the voting and let my exceptional readers decide whether the old or new identities are better.

Let’s get started.

Old:

New:

Even to a non-coffee-drinker like myself, the Eight O’Clock brand is highly recognizable, thanks in large part to the the handsome and distinct Bokar font designed by letterer extraordinaire Daniel Pelavin.

All-in-all, the rebranding is pretty decent, I think. The logotype lost some of its charm and distinctiveness, and the leaf-shaped apostrophe, and associated kerning, are pretty awful. But it could be a hell of a lot worse, and I think it feels more contemporary at the end of the day.

What do you think? Did it go from Eight O’Clock to Eight O’Schlock?

Be sure to check back in every day this week for more!

Thanks to P*S* Reader, iPhone user, and good friend Domenic Pagalilauan, for today’s thought-provoking pairing.

Be like Dom! Go here to learn more about contributing to the cause. And here to get the P*S* iPhone App.