Duane Reade desperately needed a face lift, but this new visual identity is more of a sag. The kind of sag that comes when you find a great new moisturizer that promises to uplift, vitalize and energize but after a few weeks, you aren't feeling anymore like a model than you do a broomstick.
Considering that two of Duane Reade's main competitors have red logos (CVS, Walgreens), it was a good idea to move away from the red and blue and embrace black and white. The latter combination is a solid way to imply "luxury," however I'm not so sure how a place that sells everything from toilet paper to $2.99 mascara can even be considered luxurious. I think it may have been better for Duane Reade to use black and white as a way of saying Duane Reade = New York City and thus fit in with every New Yorker's visual dictionary that defines "nyc" as Woody Allen films, grit and dirt, Gotham City, and toughness. This would foster a sense of consumer pride about being connected to their city, and emotion is the way to really connect people with brands.
The type treatment and design of the logo belies this would-be New York synonymity by shoving a thick sans serif "D" into a refined and classic serif "R" within an unappealing disfigured circle. There's a pupil-painful disconnect that arises from the "D" seeming to be vertically squished to be at the same height as the "R" so that they both fit between the base line and the cap line, which underscores how much the negative space has largely been ignored. And why do these letters even need to be contained in a circle? New York is city of hard lines, squares, and ninety-degree angles, not soft and rounded circles. Even the "R" seems to want to break out of this horrendous design with its leg extending out on the right. And the "D" -- its corners are cut off all for the sake of fitting these letters inside a circle. The human eye is naturally drawn to circular objects and we find them visually harmonious and pleasing, however our eyes are struggling to complete and round out the circle in this goofy logo, yet we cannot and so it feels wrong and unsettling.
The one thing I do like is keeping the "DR" to maintain an association with doctor and medicine, but the type is more reminiscent of a Fashion Bug or 99¢ store logo than a respected New York pharmaceutical institution; this new logo is inconsistent and flimsy, not concrete and stolid.
Command+W it.
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