New & Busted





Old Hotness

Though La Rosa’s is a far superior pizza (with full emphasis on the Cincinnati hometown bias), I’m no stranger to Donatos; a pizza chain started in Columbus, OH in 1963. Back in February Donatos launched a new brand identity complete with new logo and store remodeling courtesy of Engauge, formerly TenUnited (surprise surprise, marketing firm websites with too much Flash that take too long to load).

Bland. Plastic. Unemotional. It’s exactly the type of logo that is cranked out by design committee; the kind of people who would use a word like “behaviorists” in a press release (look at the link above, they did). If you went to art school, you know the type; the ones that got their degree based on the amount of bullshit they could shovel rather than quality of their work.

Compare the two logos in the context of what they’re designed to do; sell pizza. What does the old one tell you about the product? It has that classic old-world style, with the fat serif lettering and “wooden sign” oval shape. “Hey, we make a quality pizza. How about you come in and try it?” The new logo screams fast food. “Here is your order, may I help the next customer?” Assembly-line pizza served by teenagers being paid minimum wage. Both are undoubtedly generic, but the context makes all the difference.

There are plenty of “Italian family” type pizza joints with corresponding logos, but at least the customer can identify with that family feel. The new logo is the bad kind of corporate generic, where you can just tell that the company exists to make money and the product is an afterthought. It’s funny, then, that their rebranding is in direct opposition to the stated goal of “We want to make pizza night special again” coupled with corporate jargon of “people want to trade-up for a more premium food experience.” What? I guess that means customers want TASTY PIZZA.

Quality of product comes before flashiness of presentation. Donatos pizza isn’t bad, but when your customers become a demographic rather than, well, customers, and you’re targeting your design around that, you’ve lost your focus. You can put a new coat of shine on it, but it’s still the same cheap pizza that it was before. If you want to be the better pizza experience, then make a better pizza. Blinging out your stores doesn’t magically make the food better. The redesign looks like a rejected Circuit City revamp that heavily cribbs from competitor Dewey’s Pizza (who puts out a higher quality/more expensive product than Donatos) with a touch of Chipotle thrown in for good measure.