Fleka

Pepsi has done it again. It looks like that it cannot stick with a decent solution for more than a couple of decades, and this ultimate version seems to have triggered mostly negative comments in the design world.

"We felt like, as we move out of this traditional mass marketing and mass distribution era into today's culture, there's an opportunity to bring humanity back, both in terms of the design but also in the way we engage consumers. By making the logo more dynamic and more alive ... [it is] absolutely a huge step in the right direction." -- Frank Cooper, Pepsi's VP-portfolio brands

“More dynamic….more alive...humanity”??? I cannot but question myself if Mr Cooper really believes in what he is actually saying? New Pepsi logo, that is supposed to represent a “smile” (evil one if you ask me), looks like the first tryout of clipping tools in Illustrator (yeah let’s try the Pathfinder).

Colours seem to have stayed the same although there are many versions on the internet so I’m not really sure until I get hold of a can.

The (evil) smile

The “evil” smile seems to change between the three versions (diet, classic, max), where the unhappiest one (the grin) is the diet pepsi representing probably the unhappiest drinkers of Pepsi - those who drink the diet version.

So the sweeter it gets, the happier (or more evil, depends from the point of view) you get - way to go Pepsi!

Wavy “e” - what the...?

The typography has changed as well. Since the “smile” “made it more human”, typography was probably supposed to make it more elegant and clean - I found somewhere on the net this image of the pepsi t-shirt from the 70s and it seems that this font was the base for creating a new lettering.

Letters appear slimmer, more sterile, and anything but human. I don’t know why but I would expect to see this on some fancy perfume or new-born fashion brand. What really bothers me though, is the letter “e” that was made wavy - it looks more like an error rather than an actual character.

Yes, I know that those who made this, had to justify the $1.2 million for the restyling (by the way, Pepsi has announced to invest $1.8 billion in the promotional campaign), but come on!

Is this a joke or when you got to the letter e you were already feeling sad for loosing the previous logo so you reintroduced the original “wave” flipped?

Pushing it

There are those who actually believe that this logo actually resembles a lot the OBAMA ’08 logo but I personally do not share that opinion. I think the logo resembles true american colours and that that’s where the story ends.

It’s not far from being somewhat of a DHARMA initiative can from television series “Lost” (just a name and logo, the army of people who only drink Pepsi)

Add a line and you get the low pants and someone’s back side starts popping out of the jeans, some suggest.

Us Europeans

Whichever the case we will have to wait for a bit until it gets on the European shelves (first is USA), so we can still breathe freely for a while…

Maybe in the meantime, Pepsi decides to do a restyling again.