Crate & Barrel Logo PNG
Reliability and durability are evident in the Crate & Barrel logo. The company consistently offers the best ceramics and textiles year after year. The emblem guarantees that anyone who visits the store once will become a long-term customer.
Gordon Segal grew up in Chicago in a restaurant family and learned customer service by helping his father. At Northwestern University, he met Carole Brow. In 1960, Gordon earned a degree in business administration, while Carole earned a degree in English literature. They married in June 1961.
The idea came in early 1962, when Gordon noticed a cutting board they had bought in the Caribbean during their honeymoon. He saw a gap in American retail for stylish, well-made, and affordable home goods. The couple had no import or retail experience, but invested $12,000 of their savings and borrowed $5,000 from Gordon’s father.
On December 7, 1962, they opened their first store at 1516 North Wells Street in Chicago’s Old Town, inside a former elevator factory. Plates, glasses, and kitchenware were displayed on overturned crates and barrels. A friend suggested “Barrel and Crate,” but Carole reversed the words, creating Crate & Barrel. The corporate name Euromarket Designs helped them approach European manufacturers directly.
After uneven early sales, young buyers began coming to Old Town. In 1964, the Segals visited family factories in Sweden, France, and Germany. Design Research in Cambridge later shaped the store format. New stores opened in Wilmette in 1968 and Oak Brook in 1971. Harrison Ford briefly worked there as a manager. Williams-Sonoma and Restoration Hardware later served a similar market. In 2000, CB2 launched for younger urban customers. In May 2008, Gordon Segal handed the CEO role to Barbara Turf when annual sales reached $1.3 billion, and the Otto Group had already acquired the company.
Meaning and History
The Segal honeymooners decided to sell home furnishings after vacationing in the Caribbean, where they saw similar stores. The idea seemed very successful to them, and the couple immediately set about implementing it. A family friend came up with the name for the company. He suggested calling the startup Barrel and Crate, but the words were swapped for harmony. At first glance, the name was unusual, but it became the basis for the logo. It suggests that all goods are delivered from abroad and imported directly in barrels and crates. The entrepreneurs decorated the first storefront with upside-down shipping containers and wood chips to emphasize the concept.
Crate & Barrel has a simple black wordmark. Tom Shortlidge designed it in late 1967. The Young & Rubicam employee created, in fact, one of the longest-lived logos in the U.S. retail market because it is still used in its original form. And Shortlidge was responsible not only for the brand’s visual identity but also for its advertising. For several decades, he did the latter until the baton passed to Dangel Advertising.
What is Crate & Barrel?
Crate & Barrel is an American holding company owned by German company Otto GmbH & Co KG. It is in the retail of home goods, including furniture, housewares, and decorative accessories. It has its network of stores for this purpose, covering the United States, Canada, the UAE, Singapore, Peru, and many other countries.
The author of the wordmark used Helvetica Grotesque as the basis, slightly altering some of the glyphs. The designer’s creativity was evident in the letter “C,” formed from a perfectly circular ring. It is visually unbalanced, so it seems heavy. There’s a similar symbol in the ITC Avant Garde Gothic typeface, but it appeared a year after the Crate & Barrel logo. Consequently, Tom Shortlidge was inspired by something other than Avant Garde when designing the “C.”
The American company was the first in the world to combine furniture and accessories to create the illusion of home interiors right in the salesrooms. After that, everyone began copying the private chain’s distinctive style, underscoring its undeniable innovation. But the original approach did not appear in the Crate & Barrel logo because it has not changed since 1967. The wordmark still has a simple inscription that looks laconic and elegant in black.
Font and Colors
When Tom Shortlidge created the company symbol, he used a bold Helvetica typeface designed by Swiss designers Eduard Hoffmann and Max Miedinger. The main innovation on his part is the letter “C,” which looks like a perfectly round ring with a hole in the right side. One could have assumed it was the analog of the “C” from ITC Avant Garde Gothic if the typeface with ultra-geometric letters had not appeared a year after the Crate & Barrel logo. In the classic version, the lettering is black, and the background is white.