RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Charlotte-based Belk is looking to update its 122-year-old image.The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Sunday that the iconic Southern department store chain will spend about $70 million to change its logo to a more modern look and rebrand itself. Belk last changed its script logo 43 years ago.
The new logo will be all lowercase letters. The first wave of about 60 stores to get the new signs will be in larger cities of Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte and Raleigh. The rest of the company's 300 stores get the signs over the next year.
I like this new design, but to me it doesn't say "Belk." The logo feels kind of '70s. The flower is interesting, and the tagline is decent, but the logotype is a ripoff of Bloomingdale's with a side of Macy's with the flower positioning. It's too "me too." One of the posters to my Facebook page likened the flower to a logo on a feminine hygiene product.
ReplyDeleteThe Belk cartouche was theirs! They owned it, and there was nothing else like it. It was especially handsome back in the Seventies when they still filled in the parts with various colors and had the bags with the overprint in all the shades. Even the "All For You" period wasn't especially bad design-wise.
I should have known the end was coming when they cheapened the logo around the time of the Parisian takeover. That simplification ruined what was arguably their best visual identifier.
The worst part, I think, is that this is the end of Hudson Belk and Matthews Belk, the last two links to the old partner names. That's the part that irks me the most, because their interpretations of the Belk logo were especially beautiful.