Opinion BY Armin

Milliken Goes Soft

With roots as far back as 1865, Milliken is a South Carolina-based “innovation company that has been exploring, discovering, and creating ways to enhance people’s lives”. What that means is that they develop new products that are hard to categorize in one fell swoop: they manufacture floor coverings, carpet, specialty fabrics, and even chemicals that go into things like crayons. Milliken holds an astounding 2,200 patents and employes 7,000 people — more than a 100 PhD’s among them — and maintains 39 manufacturing facilities across the world. In April Milliken introduced a new identity designed by San Francisco-based SALT Branding that is based on the signature of its late President Roger Milliken, who had taken over the company in 1947 when his father and company founder Seth Milliken passed away.

Roger Milliken was famous internally for his hand-written notes that are often kept by employees for years. The new logo expresses that personal connection that is so important to the company, and the design system even includes a customized script typeface, titled “Thank-you”, that keeps that idea alive. The logo design also reinforces the playful approach the company applies to its problem solving, and is a simple and bold statement that adds a personal touch and accessibility to the business.
— SALT Press Materials

To support its commitment to delivering world-class innovation, the company also unveiled a new logo for the first time in 40 years. Reflecting the vibrancy and creativity of the organization and based upon the signature of the company’s 70-year leader and former chairman, the late Mr. Roger Milliken, the new logo is simple, playful, bold, and signals a continuing commitment to excellence, leadership, and ethics.
— Press Release [PDF]

Unlike many of the recent redesigns on Brand New, the previous logo wasn’t bad at all. The icon clearly signaled “fabrics” of some kind — perhaps it said fabrics too much, becoming limiting for a company doing so many other things — and it was well executed and interesting. Perhaps it presented some reproduction problems when made small and the typography was bland but there wasn’t much wrong with it. The change to the new identity is very abrupt and it gives the company a very drastic change of personality, going from a very serious, corporate look to a consumer-friendly one and in the fields of fabric-producing and chemical-mixing I’m not sure how well a “soft” look plays. I certainly have to say that not knowing what Milliken was before doing this post, if I were shown the logo I would think it would be for a brand of Swiss chocolates. Nonetheless, the script wordmark is very nicely done and it’s a great gesture to the company’s roots that it is based on Milliken’s own signature, it makes for a great story to tell at trade shows and when executives and sales people meet other executives and customers.

In the applications the logo beefs up a little with a more serious and controlled approach and the good, ol’ fashioned corporate blue does a good job at helping in that regard. Overall, this is a very interesting transformation.

A brief, but nice, logo animation can be found here. Skip to 3:26.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners