Brand Research and Analysis

Research and Analysis of 

Current Vintage Stores 

After deciding to create a vintage clothing brand, I have chosen to look into some of the current industry leaders in vintage fashion reselling; this analysis of both their brand atheistic and the way in which they present themselves to their target market will give me a clear understanding of why they’re successful in what they do. This will help inform me in my design decisions towards the branding of my vintage clothing store.  

COW VINTAGE

Cow Vintage Logo

Cow Vintage Look Book

'Cow Vintage' is one of the market leaders in vintage resellers currently with stores in 5 major cities and an expanding global website delivering to every country worldwide. They have also progressed to have concessions within market giant Topman/Topshop. This success in sheer size shows COW are doing something right. Their clean cut simplistic design with striking yellow contrasts each other leaving the consumer with a memorable distinct flavour for COW’s brand focuses. COW themselves promote reinvigoration of clothing bringing them back to fashion. Although a vintage store COW does not withhold traditional vintage values such as cheap prices and car boot sheek interiors. This is represented in their logo and logotype through their consistent use of Arial Black for their font, it is widely recognised as one of the most basics of fonts; their branding either uses the typeface in upper or lower case on all branding. Persistent use of one typeface in different contexts or variations gives the company brand identity. This is something I am thinking about experimenting with in my work. COW’s target market is early to mid 20’s and students, their logotype is representative of this through the use of a modernistic concise font, making their marketing and promotion materials clear that it is part of the brand. This is then further supported by the use of white space in their square logo, putting all focus on the words it contains and drawing the audience’s eyes the statement “WE ARE COW”. The use of a medium-loose kern also reaffirms this visual atheistic that the brand are focusing on, as it is on trend and perpetuates clarity.

Blue Rinse, Leeds

Blue Rinse Logo/GIF

Blue rinse is a smaller vintage clothing reselling company, with only two stores and a smaller online presence it gives me a good representation of how I should be branding my company. It also gives me an accurate representation of how the branding in the store is used, this is because I have been into the store and looked at the way in which the logotype is used in context. This logo similar to the COW one focuses on making the context the visual focal point of the image, this is done through the use of blue against white text; the eye is drawn to the blue first due to the amount of space it takes up in comparison to the text. This is less simplistic than the COW logo, but this is also representative of the brand identity. In terms of visual merchandising blue rinse are more eclectic and random. This is an element I need to keep in mind when designing my logotype, I need the typeface and placement in context to coincide with the aesthetic of the brand. This idea of the brand identity being represented through their logo is also conveyed in their use of a playful typeface none of which has any vertical terminals, giving this rough sense of almost not caring about tidiness. None of the typeface sits on an equal baseline, once again giving this handmade look to it. The use of this typeface portrays to the audience that the vintage store is ‘mismatch’ and ‘playful’ which is the basis of traditional vintage fashion; yet I need to take into consideration that the industry is moving away from this idea and creating a generation of clean cut almost clinical vintage style stores, therefore their graphic design should visually represent said values.