Everything Old Is Old Again

The recent manufactured outrage over the Cracker Barrel’s brand redesign — and that in itself is cause for discomfort — of the “Old Timer” wordmark that first broke cover in the 1960s and managed to survive well into the 21st century has now pretty much dissipated. What began as a hand drawn illustration long before desktop publishing was even a lone point of light in the visual design universe, when type was still rendered with hot lead, and the term digital had yet to come into use as a noun, finally got an expensive overhaul that didn’t even survive an attempt to run it up the flagpole.

This Ship Was Already Sinking

Cracker Barrel, finding itself in a sales slump driven by an aging market and changing consumer tastes, started writing multi-million dollar checks for a makeover ranging from menu to environment to message to, our topic du jour, identity.

As they quickly found out, their base, apparently comprised solely of right-wing diners sensitive to the slightest change in interstellar radiation, assigned a political motive to the visual revision. The ensuing online melee immediately forced the retreat back to the stuck in the mid-twentieth century and the dawn of the jet age in transportation hand drawn original.

Inkjet printed signage? Ha! More like China bristle brushes and turpentine thinned oil paint, making sure there was adequate time to dry before applying.

Noted design authority Debbie Millman explains the basic nuts and bolts of marketing, branding, and design in her recent article for PRINT. She looks at what the restaurant chain Cracker Barrel got wrong, and what they got wrong, in bumbling through a poorly thought out response to an even more poorly thought out wordmark do-over.

When Government Cheese is Your Brand Color Palette

The basics of any logo or wordmark begin with what’s the minimum size and resolution for reproduction. Then, it was the Yellow Pages 33-line one-color halftone on paper that still contained wood chips for added tactical character. Today, it’s the favicon, the 16×16 pixel that appears in the URL of brand pages, and that when properly executed represents the epitome of graphic design goals in the digital age.

What Would Walmart Do

In either case — from the 1960s or the 2020s — this particular brand flops. Much has been made about the nostalgia generated by the founder’s folksy Uncle Herschel, and his representation in that original foray into a graphic simile. It was then, and remains today, an unpleasant blob of elementary line art using a color palette of government cheese and brown furniture. (At least Burger King has the good sense to limit their use of a similar shade to represent a bun.) Imagine Walmart using their ubiquitous greeters as a corporate symbol of what the stores represent.

It’s not clear whether the brand will survive, or whether it will join its like brethren Boston Market and Po’ Folks in once loved now gone similar venues. Certainly, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, no one’s rushing to capitalize on this brand’s style guide.