Burberry's New Logo Breaks From Modern Tradition

There’s a new serif in town. Daniel Lee’s stint as creative director at Burberry has begun in earnest after the British brand unveiled a series of campaign images featuring new brand ambassadors and, crucially, a new logo.

The previous logo, a minimal, sans-serif design worthy of a tech-start up, was only unveiled four years ago, the handiwork of storied British designer Peter Savile. But the new font suggests more than just a changing of the guard at Burberry, but a potential shift in the fundamentals of modern luxury branding.

Traditionally, the logo of a ‘luxury’ brand was heavy on the flourishes and tails, evoking legacy and heritage and a rich history of leather-bound books etc. But over the past few years, a series of brands ditched their longstanding logos for ‘cleaner’ versions. Berluti, Balenciaga, Celine, Saint Laurent, Balmain, Calvin Klein, Rimowa… the list goes on. The likes of Microsoft, Google and Spotify set the trend, and luxury followed suit. Not only did scores make the change, but they all started to look the same, too. The Helvetica-fication of fashion.

For Burberry's previous logo, Saville explained in interviews that he had wanted to err on the utilitarian, something the former brand’s former creative director Riccardo Tisci gravitated toward. “And the Burberry letters were a gift,” Saville told Vogue Business. “You've got two Bs, you've got three Rs. They're all very similar in proportion. They just fall into place. So once we'd actually found the typographic form, resolving it into a unified whole was quite straightforward.”

Tisci expressed that the brand needed a logo that could work as well on the collar of a chiffon blouse as it could the lining of a raincoat. And that, perhaps, is how we’ve arrived to this state of near-homogenisation. Logos, especially those of modern luxury brands, don’t just sit on one product on a shelf. They are on clothes, accessories, websites, homeware, social media influencers’ Instagram feeds… and they need to be legible and recognisable on every platform. The fewer flourishes, the better.

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That Lee and new Burberry CEO Jonathan Akeroyd have decided to not only reintroduce a serifed logo (albeit a minimal one), but also the brand’s equestrian knight ‘Prorsum’ logo – first introduce in 1901, and now in royal blue no less! – is a clear decision to break from latter-day tradition.

What it says about Lee’s designs for the clothes themselves is yet to be seen, but the campaign was shot in London, by British photographer Tyrone Lebon, and features a slew of homegrown stars including Vanessa Redgrave, Raheem Sterling (above) and Lennon Gallagher, so expect the notion of Blighty to feature heavily.