BY Armin

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Established in 1979 as Second Harvest, the hunger-relief organization began with a humble thirteen food banks and 2.5 million pounds of food distributed. Since then, it has grown to a network of 200 food banks across the U.S. distributing 2 billion pounds of food. Around 1999, Siegel + Gale, working pro-bono for the organization, helped articulate its mission, added the word “America’s” to emphasize its commitment to the whole country, introduced the tagline “Ending Hunger” and they created the tablecloth logo. This month, America’s Second Harvest changed its name to Feeding America.

Despite a 30-year legacy of fighting hunger, America’s Second Harvest has been confronted with low awareness among the general public, and a broader misunderstanding of domestic hunger. Knowing that true, monumental progress can be made when the public is fully engaged in our cause, we have researched how we can best inspire people. We found that the name America’s Second Harvest was limiting and that a new name was needed to quickly and clearly convey our mission.
— From the web site

The name change feels very appropriate, specially as the name of the organization had ballooned over the years to be America’s Second Harvest the Nation’s Food Bank Network. While not only a mouthful, it wasn’t perfectly clear exactly what they did: “Second Harvest” was, at best ambiguous, and “Nation’s Food Bank Network” mostly implied a network of physical spaces that acted as food banks. Feeding America, while it may sound obviously basic, makes the mission of the organization perfectly clear while also evidently stating that there is a large amount of Americans that need to be fed, and is not a problem going away anytime soon.

Old cornucopia logo, and Siegel + Gale’s original design.

The old logo also suffered from too many words, squished together and making the lovely tablecloth flag a second thought. The new logo is a simple execution — how lucky to have an even number of letters in each word and how even more miraculous that the “I”s meet at exact same position? — and while the wheat flourish may be a slightly broad and maybe a little vague representation for food I feel it conveys the message swiftly. Overall, a great improvement that will allow the organization to more easily communicate what they do.

\n\nEstablished in 1979 as Second Harvest, the hunger-relief organization began with a humble thirteen food banks and 2.5 million pounds of food distributed. Since then, it has grown to a network of 200 food banks across the U.S. distributing 2 billion pounds of food. Around 1999, Siegel + Gale, working pro-bono for the organization, helped articulate its mission, added the word \"America's\" to emphasize its commitment to the whole country, introduced the tagline \"Ending Hunger\" and they created the tablecloth logo. This month, America's Second Harvest changed its name to Feeding America.

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