I’ve been reading a fair amount on Starbucks’ new logo identity commemorating their 40 years of business (See Brand New’s take here, and here).

The guys over there are exceedingly good at discussing the elements of branding. How this is an evolution, how there were extraneous elements, etc. Not to belittle those points—I’m just not good at talking about them, and besides, if you read the links above, I’ve got nothing to add to the discussion.

However, two points were gently mentioned and somewhat glazed over:

1. The logo went from two colors to one.
2. There’s no more text.

Okay, so there’s an upfront cost that signage on stores and stuff are going to have to be updated. That’s a given.

But here’s the big win: Think about how much easier and cheaper it’s going to be for Starbucks to print everything. From now on, every single cup that’s manufactured only needs one color of ink. (Coming from a guy whose business depends on printing, this is a huge deal.) And every single coffee bag, and every single tote bag, and every single one of those cardboard-ey things that they put around the cup so you don’t burn your hand. (Do those have a name? Is it a holder?) The store signage gets printed and updated once. The cups are manufactured millions (zillions?) of times.

Further, from now on, they don’t need separate print runs for Starbucks locations in other countries. Or at least (since a Google Image search for “German Starbucks Coffee” didn’t result in “Starbucks Kaffee” logos) the branding in every country around the globe will make sense and won’t be hindered by English letters.

A++ work.