OUGD403 - Studio Brief 01 - Superdrug Rebranding Part 1

For this rebranding brief I chose to rebrand the high street drugstore Superdrug. Superdrug is the second largest health and beauty retailer in the country behind Boots, with 850 stores across the UK and Ireland. Founded in 1964, it adopted the name later that year and has been a staple hight street brand ever since. I chose to rebrand it however as I didn't feel their current logo (below) was suitable for a brand as large and well-known as this. Although it is definitely an established logo, with both the font and the colours being instantly recognisable on the high street, the typeface is too thin and the odd gaps within letters mean the flow of the word is interrupted.

In order to rebrand Superdrug I would have to create a logo that still allows the company to be recognised as well as creating a more impactful brand that continues to reflect both the trustworthy reputation and the budget friendly nature of the company. The new design would also have to be flexible enough to work across all areas of their branding, including store fronts, store signs, carrier bags, receipts, own branded goods, loyalty cards, websites, TV adverts, and magazine adverts. The logo would need to be effective at all scales and sizes, and well as across different media formats and materials that is would be printed on (examples below).

I started by selecting a range of fonts that I thought would be appropriate. I wanted a thicker, more solid typeface to reflect the new bolder look of the company. I knew I wanted to change the mix of upper and lower case letter as in the original design, and after trialling how the name looked in both I concluded that upper case gave the impact I was seeking.

From these I selected Baron Neue (below top) and experimented with the format of the letters by compressing the letters together. However I encountered a problem in that the word 'rug' became too obviously visible within the word, but loosening the kerning was a better solution (below bottom).

I then tried to make the two individual words more distinct by widening the space between the 'R' and the 'D', but without detaching the words, and this made the name as a whole easier to read (below).

To further this rebrand I will consider the colours that Superdrug are currently using and evaluate their effectiveness in conjunction with my new designs, as well as the scales that the new logo may be used at and the effectiveness of the rebrand on the brand's target audience.