ZalandoCopied

Zalando, founded in Berlin in 2006, had grown into one of Europe's biggest online fashion retailers during the pandemic boom. In September 2024 it announced a new positioning built on style confidence, based on research into what customers valued: quality clothes and brands, community, staying ahead of trends and inspiring content. The aim was to move from transactions to connection, from e-commerce pioneer to a fashion and lifestyle destination.

The visual change was subtle. The plectrum-shaped brand mark, unchanged since 2010, got a slightly darker, more vibrant orange. The wordmark stayed lowercase but was redrawn in a new corporate typeface, Zalando Sans, a variable superfamily designed partly to improve accessibility, and the lettering moved from anthracite to a darker tone. A modular system pairs mark and wordmark in different layouts, with branded motion on top, rolled out gradually across platforms. It launched alongside the What Do I Wear? campaign by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, featuring Willem Dafoe and Brigitte Nielsen.

Anne Pascual, senior vice president for design, marketing and content, said the changes went beyond a mere visual update.

1000logos was less convinced, calling it a redesign with controversial typography. It argued that the new wordmark looked solid but arrhythmic: the condensed Zala reads darker and shorter than the more loosely spaced ndo, an imbalance that kerning could have fixed. It added, generously, that the unevenness might suit a brand built on diversity.

Adformatie got the rollout logic from the company's senior vice president for design, marketing and content: the bright orange logo and redrawn wordmark would arrive gradually across platforms so customers could get used to them, and existing physical stock such as packaging would be used up before the new mark appeared. She tied the timing to the strategy update announced that March, aiming to make Zalando the destination for quality fashion, lifestyle shopping and inspiration. W&V described the new identity as clearly different from what came before. A patient rollout is sensible; using up the old boxes is admirably unglamorous.

The orange is the asset and it was handled well. The wordmark is the weak point: a Helvetica-tinged custom face in a category full of them, with spacing issues visible at a glance. For a company repositioning around taste, it needed to look a little more tasteful.