Opinion BY Armin

All Work and No Play

Established in 1998, Play.com started as an online retailer of DVDs in the UK and has since grown to offer over 8 million items including CDs, books, video games, toys, electronics, and MP3 downloads. After Amazon, it is the second leading online retailer in the UK. In August, Play.com introduced a new identity and a whole new website. There is also a U.S.-based version of Play.com that hasn’t changed logo or web design, probably because no one here considers anything but Amazon.

Old website.

I’ve never been a big fan of play button logos, they seem too simple of a solution and a cliché. In the previous logo of play.com it also happened to look as a play button you might find on one of the first VHS players. It’s clunky, old, and boring. The new logo does away with the button since now the retailer sells more than just movies, and instead has adopted a fairly generic online look of rounded sans serifs that come a dime a dozen. Its only redeeming quality might be that the tight tracking makes it just barely feel as a distinctive wordmark, as opposed to just having looser, out-of-the-box tracking. But other than that there really isn’t much to say about this logo, other than perhaps a broader note about wishing that online retailers in the second decade of the 2000s would strive for more ambitious, comprehensive identities.

Thanks to Adam Tucker for first tip.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners