Hudson’s Bay Co. is launching a redesigned corporate logo to reflect its heritage, quality and decision to drop the HBC acronym. The new logo will appear on all official Olympic apparel, athlete uniforms and advertising initiatives surrounding the Games.
NRDC Equity Partners, which purchased the Hudson’s Bay Co. in July 2008, tasked Toronto-based Arcade Agency, the agency designing the retailer’s Olympic apparel, with the corporate rebrand last fall.
“The problem with the old logo was that no one knows what HBC meant and what that represented,” said Arcade’s creative director, Pablo Mozo. “Was it a TV station? Was it a bank?
“We figured that the branding of this company has been around since 1670, and that there was no reason to completely reinvent the wheel, since people are so familiar with the brand whether they know it or not,” he said.
The new logo uses a modernized version of the Company’s original crest, with stripes inspired by the iconic Hudson’s Bay blanket and coat, said Mozo.
Instead of running across a black background, as in the previous logo, the four emblematic colours—green, red, yellow, blue—now run across a white background, reminiscent of the cream coloured blanket and coat.
“It’s [the logo] definitely steeped in tradition, in terms of stripes and the crest, but made clean and modern to show that it’s still relevant today,” said Mozo. “It’s taking the heritage and updating it without reinventing it.”
The country’s oldest retailer is moving away from its HBC acronym and returning to the “Hudson’s Bay Co,” which now appears in a sans serif font, below the new crest.
