The other day I saw a commercial for Crate & Barrel that made me stop and think about the effect design has on advertising and branding. As soon as the commercial started, I knew exactly what it was for, despite that fact that there were only two words on the screen and neither of them was the name of the company. The ampersand in the center told it all.
The Crate & Barrel logo features the Helvetica font in black on a white background with an ampersand in the middle. It is amazing that such a minimal logo can have such a big impact. I don't really shop at Crate & Barrel and I didn't know how intuitively I could pick out the brand until I saw the commercial.
The commercial itself is very well done. According to the New York Times, the campaign was designed by a German company, Otto, which seeks to filter through the clutter of today's advertisements with the simplicity of the Crate & Barrel brand. By placing the ampersand in the center of the screen and moving pairs of words in and out of the frame around it, the ad tells a story in Crate & Barrel logo form.
The simplicity of the design really did catch my attention. It made me look forward to the holidays and made me think about stopping in at Crate & Barrel. If I like the style of the advertisements, I may like the style of the products I find in the store.
While it is a very basic logo, it may be one of my favorites. It is perfectly kerned and looks very clean, which is also what I want my house to look like, so already it is selling the product. The fact that there are ascenders on the letters at the beginning and near the end of each word, but no decenders adds to that clean look. Everything is perfectly aligned.
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