4–5 minutes
Walmart is the world’s largest retailer, offering both physical retail and e-commerce. In 2023, it was America’s largest company by revenue. Groceries currently account for about 60% of its sales, but the company also sells a wide range of general merchandise, through Walmart U.S., Walmart International, and Sam’s Club warehouse stores. Walmart also offers health care products and pharmacy services. Founded in 1945, the company changed its name from Wal-Mart Stores to Walmart in 2018.
Initial Critique: The current Walmart logo is simple, to the point of vagueness. It looks like a pictograph of various circular objects, like a wheel, or fruit. I get the impression of a “pop” or an anime-style stress vein. Maybe it represents the stress the employees are under?
What works is the circular shape. Megacorps like their logos to be simple and 1:1 so they can fit in 10,000 different places. That won’t change but lets face it, the current logo resembles the Butthole Surfers “butthole” logo from the 90’s:
Brand History and Market Analysis: A former Walmart logo was the happy face button. What ever happened to him?
Some light research tells me Walmart has had legal issues over the face logo. I won’t bother reprising it at all since it is unlikely to return. And no derivatives because Amazon, a major competitor, already has a prominent “smile” on every package.
Eliminating First Impulses: Avoid the urge to slap a big W in a blue circle, because that is a waste of everyone’s time.
Exploring An Option: Walmart used to be called Wal-Mart. WM. And WM has great potential because of it’s obvious nature as an ambigram. Visualizing an interconnected W and M that are readable in a reversed position, and form a unified shape.
This idea leads to a concept that is very close to the Waste Management logo. I won’t waste time doing anything close to this. I think Walmart wants to stay far away from the idea of waste, garbage, and landfills:
Additional Market Concerns: Walmart wants to retain brand recognition. Which means that they want to preserve the current logo, while updating it. Through decades of watching logos evolve I already know what the next phase of this logo will be. And that is removing the outer circle, and keeping the buttho…–the sparkle. But the current sparkle is yellow which needs to become blue. That is because the current yellow is so close to the McDonald’s arches that are already featured in many Walmart stores. We want to prevent the brands from being perceived as merging into one, a process which has already begun. So Walmart should go all in on blue now.
On further review, the current logo is already independent of the circle, and many stores as well as the website prominently feature the sparkle by itself. That’s what I would have done! But Lippincott has already done it:
So, if I was going to get one step ahead of Lippincott, where whould I go? Because they do need to go forward. The process of “modernizing’ is a perpetual one.
So given these assessments, this is where I would bring Walmart’s logo in 2025.
• Keeping the “sparkle” that has recognition, and updating to the current Walmart blue.
• Moving away from the Yellow preventing an unwanted brand merge with McDonald’s.
My reasoning here is that light yellow is well known as a color used by fast food providers. Fast food has a particular reputation representing something very different from what Walmart has to offer. Walmart has made strides in improving it’s selection of organic and natural groceries, packaged goods, and a broad selection of merchandise that is just not food. The two brands need to be set apart now especially because they are available under one roof.
So my submission as a Lippincott partner or competitor would be this color update.
Final Logo Update:
