Staples is the largest retailer of office equipment. Divisions of Staples, Inc. operate in the markets of the USA, Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Holland, and Portugal. Located in the busiest places, Staples supermarkets offer more than 7,500 items of office supplies every day. In addition to office equipment and essential items for the office, Staples sells products of its own production, namely paper, pens, various accessories, and even office furniture. Children can also choose various unique products for school and entertainment. The brand is also concerned about the environmental friendliness of its products, so you will find a wide variety in the eco category. The main feature of the brand is the individual approach to each client, conceived and developed personally by Tom Stemberg.
Meaning and History
The company was founded in 1985 by Thomas G. Stemberg. It was before the creation of his largest project that the founder of the company worked in the marketing department, so he knew everything and even more about high-quality office work. Actually, it was when Tom Stemberg was typing a business plan for a new project, and the ink ribbon broke in his typewriter, that the business idea was born. The nearest stationery store was closed. Stemberg was not too lazy to go to the nearby wholesale warehouse and department store, but there were only about a hundred types of office items on sale, and the tape suitable for his typewriter was not among them. So, he decided to open a supermarket specializing in goods for the office, where there will be everything necessary both for representatives of small businesses and for ordinary customers. Thanks to the quality of the goods and extremely low prices, the brand began to develop significantly and gained wide popularity in the country. In order to be stable at a time when online stores are becoming extremely popular, there are several ways to buy other similar tracks – Office Depot. So far, the attempts have not been successful for various reasons.
What is Staples?
Staples, Inc. is engaged in the retail supply of office supplies. It offers a wide range of copying and printing products and technologies through integrated retail and online stores. In the assortment of Staples, there are products of well-known leaders in the production of office equipment such as Panasonic, Samsung, Xerox, Hewlett Packard, and Epson at quite reasonable and affordable prices.
1986 – 1988
From the very start, the company went for a minimalistic, simple design of its logo that consisted of the name with a unique touch. In this version, the name is printed using tall, all uppercase letters that are closely spaced together. The font chosen for the inscription has no serifs and features smooth, thin strokes. The star of this logo is the letter “L”, which not only has a rounded corner but also a stroke that curves down at the top. It is meant to make it appear that it was formed from a bent staple. This was surely a neat designer’s trick to connect a basic inscription to the actual meaning of the name.
1988 – 1998
There are no drastic changes here, but soon after the first logo was designed, it was decided to make it bolder. This made the logo easier to read and use for various purposes. The font was also slightly adjusted. The inscription did not look as tall, which removed the unique appearance of the wordmark but made it more practical.
1998 – 2019
This is the logo of a powerful and determined company that means to stay on the market for many years to come. The font has once again undergone a few changes but otherwise stayed sans-serif and bold with clean lines and cuts. The most notable update is the color, which was changed to a saturated red. Despite this seemingly drastic change, it was easy to draw the line between this and the previous version.
2019 – Today
This is so far the boldest change in the logo. First of all, the familiar staple is no longer part of the inscription. It is now set right next to it on the left and has the same height as the first letter. On that note, it is worth mentioning that the company used a sentence case for the first time in history. It also introduced a more elegant font with beautiful curves and small details. As a result, it got a modern and stylish logo that was still in line with its long-standing brand image.
Font and Color
For the first twelve years of its history, the company turned to black for its logo. It was a good choice that allowed the company to stay on the safe side while it was making a name for itself. Although there was no need to change it as black is associated with strength and security and has that formal look, it did change to a much bolder choice. It was a bright red color that caught the attention and urged one to go into the store and find all those essential and not so much items for home and office.
Until 2019, the font choices stayed pretty consistent and one would have to place the inscriptions side by side to notice the difference. The first logo featured a finer, sans-serif font similar to SansXHigh by M. Klein. The next one is bold and resembles Signal Light by Production Systems. It was later replaced by a well-known Helvetica Bold font or a similar font known as Warownia Narrow. The latest logo also uses a sans-serif font, but it pays a lot more attention to the little details that make it look more sophisticated.
