gallo: I'll buy it— better.

vivendi: OK, but purple?

Chesapeake: Peaked in 64'

Chesapeake looks to have taken a few steps backward in their "evolutionary" timeline.
I understand what they were going for... but they totally missed in my eyes.

What's up with the G in Gallo?

New Chesapeake type is better. Old logo was better.

Gallo I like the wine colored Hitchcock-like rooster profiles, though the abstraction may be lost on new customers. Mature, classy typography.

vivendi The 'e' feels too dense. The unique letterforms do separate the logo from other lowercase marks. The purple effectively portrays a break from the norm.

Chesapeake The typography works. (I hate reg marks) The wave doesn't look resolved. It is too far removed from the 'C'. The visual tension at the pointy crest of the wave is distracting and confining.

The more I look at the Gallo logo, the more I like how the letters relate to each other.

Zoelle, nice find. The new Gallo logo is appreciable. Still, I long for the G to have it's fissure mended.

Hey, Chesapeake, surf's up! Are you trying to appeakl to Malibu and Honolulu beach bums?

Gallo hands down is the most sucessful rebranding of the group. I follow up Zoelle’s comment on the relationship of the letterforms— unquie, special forms that aren't overstated, unlike the Vivendi rebranding.

The "e" and "d" do not mix at all with the other letterforms and just scream "IM TRYING TO BE DIFFERENT!!!!!!!!!!"

The cut in the Gallo "G" is distracting. I'm also not crazy about the kerning in G-a-l-l-o either. Feels a bit too loose.

Vivendi...well...the "e" is a real eyesore. Looks uncomfortably stretched.

Chesapeake started off in the right direction by ditching their old period typeface, but the wave is terrible. The older mark is much more memorable and elegant than a big looping arc. It's as if someone internally got sick of people not getting the wave concept in the first mark ("it's a wave? see the curve at the top?") and went super literal with the second.

I agree with what most people have said thus far. I like the Gallo, and though I'm unsure about the cut "G", the stem does remind me of the top of a bottle.

I find vivendi pretty awful, what's with these types of letterforms recently? That "d" is definitely a roman version of the "Dreamweaver d". the "end" sticks out like a sore thumb, not sure if that's an association one would want to make...

The Chesapeake type is undoubtedly better but far from anything original or interesting... the old mark was certainly better.

Yeah Kodak's new logo as well. (Though Kodak's logo is sort of growing on me).

While I'm not a fan of the old Chesapeake type, it seems to work better with the old logo--there's a continuous up and down feeling like rippling waves. If you look at the first "e" and travel over the top of each letter to the "k" it's a very uniform rounded flow... I'm picturing the "k" as another cresting wave... suddenly I'm on a raft floating off into oblivion...

The location of the Rooster profiles on the Gallo label feels ungrounded to me with the simple treatment of centering it over the block of text, echoing the alignment. I played with the location and found that when centered over the "a", not only does it feel more grounded in relation with the text, but it gives visual support to the guides Zoelle displayed.

Original:

Reworked:

Guided:

But then it begins to look like angry eyebrows...

Purple seems to becoming a trend in French companies right now.

Vivendi (notice the tint from the official website is much less saturated (nicer?) than the one from the article.

The new French Railroad identity (last year), using a gradient but with strong purple in many applications. (they have many applications where gradients don't work, and it looks really strange and blobby in black and white [as on train tickets]

mel: I agree. The rooster placement doesn't quite feel right.

I think it is due in part to the tension between the rooster 'decenders'. By nudging the pair to the left a bit and giving them a little more breathing room the rooster arrangement feels more balanced – to me.

original

altered

i'm with you mel, upon seeing this on the shelves a few months back i immediately wanted to center the roosters over the a to create a more integrated lockup, although it makes the centered support copy a bit probelmatic...and the cracked G is odd to me, it becomes focal point of curiosity that isnt needed.

When Gallo rejected my logo I was heartbroken...

hehehe.

love the invisible jug-handler... or a cocky
prayer-giving hitch hiker

Felixxx, that's a hand shadow silhouette of two roosters... very difficult to achieve without two lamps...see the thumbs making the beak? Knuckles forming the cockscomb? It's such an improvement over the plain animal heads, I thought.

But it was the "make your own" addition that screwed it up with the client. It was a tag line. Like make your own party or something. Not make your own wine.

Pesky-cute.
Pity about it not being make your own wine. I've got a german friend who makes the BEST rasp. wine. :)
I'm going with the general consensus: The Roosters were among the best of this group, but nothing really seems to stand out in my mind here.
My eye, has most definately, not been caught.

Allow me to do my best simon cowell impersonation... *ahem*

Gallo: Hideous, even with the letter relationships. There's a bit of sheepstealing going on there, the cut of the "G" looks like an exacto mistake, and the roosters are nearly unrecongizable as anything but feathers (or now, angry eyebrows). I like the lowercase L's but spacing is too much of an issue. It looks like a wine you'd buy at Walmart, which while probably true, isn't what they're probably going for. Overall: too much going on.

Vivendi: I agree that this type style is becoming too prevalent. It looks squished vertically (or stretched horizontally). I don't mind it for a single letter as an affectation but when you try to make it out into a type style it just seems like too much. Also, the progression of normal-normal-normal-MODIFIED-MODIFIED-MODIFIED-normal in the letters calls too much attention to the center of the word. I do applaud the willingness of the company to not capitalize the first letter, though. Overall: the original was better.

Chesapeake: I do appreciate the type change, but (disclaimer: the following may or may not be an accurate observation) the green got too cyan-y. I liked the older color. The "c" in the first illustration was better too. In the second one the wave needs to curl more. Overall: keep old illustration, insert new type.

Did anyone else notice that in the post the older logo was smaller and blurrier and the newer logo was bigger and crisper? Is it like those weight loss commercials where they show the "before and after" pictures and the person is badly lit and not smiling in the first picture, but in the second they're happy and bright?

Gallo: Generally agree with the previous comments. The gap in the "G" doesn't feel right. The roosters would work better moved to the left. It actually took me a moment to see them as roosters, but otherwise I like it.

vivendi: I don't dislike or like it. Which isn't a great reaction. It strikes me as a standard issue Web 2.0 logo. Nothing really wrong in my opinion, but nothing that stands out either.

Chesapeake: Looks like I'm the odd one out; I prefer the new logo. The older version is fine, but feels dated. The new font is a definite improvement: it's much more solid. I prefer the new graphic as well. The old 'c' is too small in the field of green, and when next to the name reads like a stutter ("C-Chesapeake"). The new graphic is more interesting visually and moves more like a wave.

Gallo: good rebranding

Vivendi: yawn kind of boring why have all the letters so wide and at the same height? Is there something wrong to have the V capitalized? The "E" looks awkward and distracting. whats the deal with the "d"?

Chesapeake: sure the the wave looks like a wave but it lost the clever intention of being a "c" also, now it looks like the outline of a cresent.