New Zara logo has been kerned into oblivion

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Major fashion chain Zara has released a new logo, and incited the wrath of every designer on Twitter, thanks to some over-enthusiastic kerning . The original logo, pictured below, was an all-caps wordmark that was – we'd say – a little too spaced out for our liking. But it seems to have overcorrected the issue for its new look (above), in which the letterforms are so enthusiastically overlapped as to be barely legible. 

The old Zara logo was rather spaced out

In defence of the new logo, we're pleased to see Zara has not joined the hoards of fashion brands stripping away personality and heritage from their logos in favour of classy but bland sans-serif wordmarks. Zara's new logo retains visual links to its original font, but has livened it up further with overlapping characters and serifs, and a new, curvy 'R'. 

So it's not lacking in personality, and it'll certainly stand out in a sea of increasingly similar-looking high street logos. But there isn't much else positive to say about this new logo design. Erik Spiekermann called it 'the worst piece of type I've seen in years', while others suggested it looked like it was kerned by a robot.

Designers have also been quick to point out the logo's similarity to The Met's 2016 rebrand by Wolff Olins, which similarly failed to draw much praise (it was memorably compared to a typographic bus crash).  What do you think of the new Zara logo? Let us know your thoughts on Twitter or Facebook.

Read more:

• A designer's guide to typography and fonts
• Typography trends in 2019 to look out for
• The best new logos of 2018

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