What does Wal-Mart's new logo mean?

By BusinessWeek

Something's up at Wal-Mart.

Visitors to walmart.com will notice that the logo consumers have become accustomed to over the past 17 years is gone. Gone, too, are the sharp, uppercase letters spelling out the name of the Bentonville, Ark., company and the pointy star that served as a hyphen.

In its place: a new logo that includes rounded, lowercase characters. The hyphen has disappeared. And in place of the star is a symbol that resembles a sunburst or flower. It appears after the "Walmart" name, like an asterisk begging for a footnote.

On June 30, Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, news, msgs) officially unveiled the new logo, issuing a statement that in the fall, "Walmart's U.S. locations will update store logos as part of an ongoing evolution of its overall brand."

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The updated logo made its start online on July 1, although the old logo still appears on the site of Wal-Mart's parent company, walmartstores.com.

The new logo's debut coincides with CEO H. Lee Scott's goal of transforming Wal-Mart -- most recently under fire for losing a Minnesota court case over breaking labor laws -- into a more environmentally friendly corporation.

"(The new sunburst) looks organic. My sense is they are trying to say, 'we're an eco-aware company,'" says Marty Neumeier, president of Neutron, a branding firm in San Francisco. Over the past two years, Wal-Mart has increasingly offered sustainable packaging and products, as well as reduced its truck fleet's energy consumption.

Neumeier adds that the image lacks the distinctive power of the most successful logos, such as Target's (TGT, news, msgs) bull's eye, which is immediately recognizable. Wal-Mart's sunburst, in contrast, "is designed so simply that there's no ownership to it," Neumeier says. In other words, it could be used by almost any corporation.

But Robyn Waters, a design consultant and Target's former vice-president for trend, design and product development, sees Wal-Mart's new logo as a sign that the retailer might actually be becoming more original. "I never thought the star said or meant anything. It was just generic," she says, pointing out that Macy's (M, news, msgs) also has a star as its symbol.

Other observers are homing in on Wal-Mart's new typeface, which breaks with the company's 46-year tradition of using bold capital letters.

"They seem to be going for something friendlier," says Tobias Frere-Jones, a professor of typography at Yale University and a principal at Hoefler & Frere-Jones, a type-design firm in New York.

Frere-Jones has worked with the likes of Nike (NKE, news, msgs) and Estee Lauder (EL, news, msgs). Wal-Mart's shift, he says, can be seen as an attempt to recast itself as a kinder, gentler company, despite losing the Minnesota labor case (which could mean paying up to $2 billion in damages).

How is the image friendlier? Lowercase letters tend to be interpreted as more casual and approachable, says Frere-Jones.

But Wal-Mart hasn't gone too far, keeping the brand name a proper noun and beginning with a capital letter -- think Google's (GOOG, news, msgs) all-text logo with a big "G," vs. Facebook's with a small "f." "Otherwise, it might look like they're trying too hard to play with the cool kids," says Frere-Jones.

Continued: 'A major financial undertaking'

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