Logo Deathmatch 2 - Retail: Food

Ideally, a grocery store -or any kind of retail outlet- should be judged on the quality of its merchandise or produce, and the prices associated with the same. A lot of the time, store logos tend to be pretty generic, usually just the store name or initials laid out in some specific way, maybe a little symbol next to them. Some, however, feel the need to get a bit more graphical in their executions. This is sometimes done well, but it seems like more often, we get the kind of result seen in the logo for White's Fresh Foods.

It's fairly simple and reads easily, it's contained, and it represents its business fairly accurately, but the details drag it down. The illustration shown, to me, seems just a bit dated -- I remember seeing illustrations like this in advertisements for local grocery stores, but that was over ten years ago at this point. This isn't going to work terribly well in black-and-white, either, as the fruit depicted relies on its color to not totally dominate the image visually -- small areas of white-space are going to be a lot more distracting, and grayscale isn't likely to look very appealing here. The biggest problem I have with this logo, however, has got to be the color choice displayed. The blue in the text might not be so bad, on its own. Certainly not something I'd want to associate with a grocery store, most of the time, but not horrific. When I see fruit that at least nominally appears to be a bunch of oranges, I don't expect them to be colored an aqua-blue. That indicates either very poor refrigeration capabilities, or a lack of judgment on the part of whoever approved this.


Likewise, as White's Fresh Foods is not truly horrific, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market isn't really spectacular, but neither does it make me suspect that produce is allowed to sit out until its moldy. I personally might have chosen a brighter or richer green, but the tones chosen work well to at least give the idea of freshness -- and the clock-orange reinforces the idea of ease and speed without dominating the type.

It has the same advantages as White's (simple, contained, and fairly accurately representative) but lacks the datedness and poor color-choice that drags the former down. This logo also seems like it would shrink easily -though the subtitle might be a minor issue at small sizes- and it's likely to reproduce well in black and white. It would also seem at-home on letterhead, or a printed advertisement.