The new logo must feel contemporary and modern to reflect the company's current vision of modernising and progressing and a large supermarket brand. The logo need to feel relevant to a wide target audience - primarily young adults and young professionals with a small disposable income aged between 18-35, but must also feel accessible to an older audience aged between 40-50. A potentially limited colour palette would give the brand more authenticity and reverse the perception that Aldi is an off-brand and tacky company. Currently the brand appeals to both male and female consumers equally, so the continuation of a gender neutral brand is essentially to retaining the existing target market.
Baring these factors in mind, a range of initial logo ideas for Aldi Süd were created using existing elements from the previous logos of both sides of the company:
The 'A' symbols from both existing logos were used during this experimental phase, and the original typeface used throughout the majority of the existing logos. When presenting this range of mock-up's in a peer group critique there was a range of positive feedback towards a selection of the designs (below). The majority of feedback given highlighted the simplicity of the new designs compared to the original Aldi logo. Feedback revealed that design 3 was more representative of the most recognisable Aldi logo (2006), which featured an isolated half-A symbol. However it was felt that extending the 'A' symbol to touch the box outline (as seen in design 1 and 2) was more effective as it creates fewer areas of unused negative space and gives the symbol more weight. This design decision resulted in the repositioning of the text element outside of the box, which was preferred by the critique group as it gave the name more clarity throughout the overall design. Design 4 incorporates the new element of a full 'A' symbol created for the 2017 rebrand, however this received mixed feedback within the critique group. Some felt that it represented a progression within Aldi's branding, but some felt that it was less recognisable as the face of the company and would be off-putting to existing customers.
There was positive feedback for the used of the original typeface as it was agreed that the name of the brand was boldly represented and easily visible in all of the logo designs.
Design 1
Design 2
Design 3
Design 4
There was additional positive feedback given to the more experimental designs (shown below), as it was felt that they represented a new and progressive direction for the company. However it was also agreed that they appeared strikingly different compared to the original logos and did not utilise enough of the existing elements from Aldi's previous designs. Therefore they do not strictly comply to the concept of pastiche and would be unrecognisable to the company's target market.
