Great Brand Design: Huggies 2021 brand identity

Last Modified: Jul 6th, 2021 - Category: Branding, News
great brand design: Huggies 2021

Great brands are bound to great brand design. And in this case, it’s not an exception.

Huggies is redesigning its brand image starting with a new visual identity design for 2021. While changes aren’t big, the Huggies company is revamping its identity with minor tweaks to its classic logo.

The new Huggies logo

great brand design: Huggies old and new logo design
The old Huggies logo vs the new one, Can you spot the difference?

The new visual identity includes some additions like animations and the addition of 3 new fonts for the brand:

  • Moranga (retro style serif font).
  • Baton Turbo (a grotesque sans serif typeface derived from Baton and originally designed for French Magazine GQ)
  • Omnes (a clean, rounded typeface used for paragraphs).

The result of the rebranding is much more compact and modern, even though at first glance there don’t seem to be any major changes.

The rebranding was made by UK design company Droga5. According to their own words:

For half a century, Huggies has been a category leader and baby care icon, familiar in cultures around the world. But, somewhere along the way, it had become less appealing to today’s parents, making it vulnerable to global rivals and new startups. To make Huggies more meaningful to parents around the world, and adapt to their increasingly digital behaviors, we needed to reimagine its total brand experience. So, we introduced a new global creative platform, “We Got You, Baby,” and brought it to life across every region and every step of the customer journey.

Huggies is helping babies — and by extension, parents — navigate the unknowns of babyhood. From the moment parents give birth, the whole world is a giant unknown. But the same is true for their babies. Both need a little extra reassurance to feel secure as they grow. Our platform, “We Got You, Baby,” shows how Huggies helps babies navigate a baby’s world, and how its products make babies more comfortable and secure in it. Because, at the end of the day, more secure babies mean more secure parents.

Below you can see the main changes and applications

Huggies 2021 color system

Huggies 2021 rebranding: color palette
The new color palette: from striking red to relaxed tones

The primary color is red, with Peach acting as secondary color, which provides a soft contrast to the red color and the black typography.

This change was made to help the brand stand out and to support the baby themes on which Huggies products are based.

Great brand design: logo redesign and corrections

great brand design: logo corrections
The sign of a great brand design: small changes are actually very important

The logo is also in a slightly different position and forms an arc instead of a straight line, as well as having some shadow added in order to better fit with its new positioning.

As I said before, there’s nothing revolutionary in the new logo, it’s mostly minor fixes. In this case, it’s a simple but effective evolution that retains the recognizable gestures of the taller “H” and the tilted “G”, which now have a more balanced relationship as the “H” becomes shorter and aligns with the “G” above. The counter spaces have been opened up a bit and the outlines of the letters have been made more coherent – if you look at the before and after animation, it’s interesting to see how off the “E” was.

Now if you want something revolutionary, controversial or creative, (or why this is the mark of a great brand design), let’s take a look at the new monogram. This one is interesting because it’s not really a logo redesign, but rather an evolution of the existing monogram seen on some older Huggies products.

A small “H” icon is being used as a monogram. It’s not there because it needs to be, but rather because it makes for a more dynamic look and allows for a smaller symbol and digitla applications (without losing legibility).

It retains the geometric elements and proportions of the traditional monogram – most importantly keeping the same 3-D effect (which has been slimmed down a bit in this new iteration) and applying it to vertical and horizontal axes. The only notable change is where the two parts of the “H” are joined at their sides – in the previous version they were joined at a point further down, whereas now they are joined at points closer together.

A new shape has been added to both the jar and label shown in this redesign. Here you can see that they have changed from hexagons (originally used since 1957) to round shapes – evoking associations with other brands like baby food jars or medicine bottles.

The label also includes text that could be seen as impossible due to its size, so they used an image instead so that it’s easier for people reading these labels not only by sight but also visually impaired readers.

The rebranding of Huggies is the rebirth of an icon that honors the past while looking to a digital future – from brand to mobile and from packaging to digital shelf.

Both updates, introduced in tandem with Huggies’ marketing department, create a cohesive visual language that embraces the qualities of smart, accessible, and playfully irreverent. The process begins with a refresh of the wordmark and the creation of a new monogram.

The familiar weighty and bold wordmark was given more balance and symmetry in its spacing and rounded edges. The monogram explores the personification of the letterform “H”. The crossbar provides a shape for an interesting embrace between the stalks that signifies a hug.

The thicker, rounded stems are meant to convey softness and support.

User interface design

Regarding the user interface design, you can now select Huggies diapers by clicking them once on your screen: If you click on the pack once, it will play an animation showing how fast babies go through diapers while changing their diapers multiple times during one day. If you click once again, you’ll get information about all features of Huggies diapers that make them unique compared with others such as absorbency level, leakage protection etc…

In short: each product page will include all related information needed when buying Huggies products: price, style, size etc… These are called “user experiences” (well…).

huggies layout system UI design
The Huggies layout system in action

Every experience is accompanied by an animation or video depending on what type of content is being provided: images/videos are accompanied by animations or videos respectively. On the other hand, texts are accompanied by static images with optional animations depending on whether they contain visual elements like text bubbles containing explanatory text or not. However, if there isn’t any visual element available then no animation will play when giving text-based content such as prices.

brand voice and visual identity
Examples of brand voice in this great brand design

As mentioned above this rebranding project included 3 fonts which were previously unavailable before were now able to be selected through font picker : Moranga (a retro serif font), Baton Turbo (a grotesque sans serif font) and Omnes (a clean rounded typeface).

Huggies Typography
The new fonts for Huggies 2021 rebranding

These fonts weren’t necessarily intended for use at final production stage but rather just provided here so we can compare how different variants appear next to each other using these 3 fonts side by side: Baton Turbo vs Omnes vs Moranga .

Also below you can see how different styles render across various devices; note that there might be minor differences between versions due to browser rendering issues like missing borders around icons etc..

The new branding is a major overhaul of the Huggies brand. The biggest changes come from the new logo and the new, smaller, monogram icon. The new logo is instantly recognizable and seems to be more contemporary and dynamic. The new icon is much more compact and requires less space on the page.

Huggies merchandising
Huggies merchandising and application in product design

The new packaging has also been redesigned to be much more modern and compact. Finally, the brand is now more consistent with the rest of the company’s visual identity.

As you can see, the new design doesn’t look very different from the old one, though it’s much more modern.

Overall, the new brand identity is much more modern and consistent with the rest of the company’s visual identity.

The new Huggies identity has been launched in the US , Canada and Brazil . It will be gradually rolled out in other markets in the coming months.

Conclusion on Huggies rebranding

Huggies’ rebranding is a perfect example of great brand design: you don’t need to do huge things or go flashy all over. You just need to fix the little things that makes a great brand design perfect. As simple as that. And that’s what the design firm did.

In short: another great rebranding for a year with great rebranding examples!

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