The current logo of the fashion house Issey Miyake bears a minimalist, basic feel. The brand itself is popular and distinctive enough to afford such a style without the risk of becoming indistinctive.
The Issey Miyake logo features the name of the designer in black over the white background. The letters belong to an unpretentious all-caps sans. They have classic proportions based on the rectangle. None of the glyphs seem to be unusual in any way – all of them feature the same style and perfectly merge to form a single whole.
On the one hand, the simplicity of the logo puts it on the verge of being indistinctive. Such a logo can be called generic as it hardly has a single feature making it stand out among thousands of competitors. On the other hand, the Issey Miyake brand does not have to use the logo to stand out among its competitors as it is already one of the world’s best-known fashion houses.
Another important reason for using such an austere logo is that it does not set any limits for the design of the collections, the emotions they convey or even the lifestyle statement. The designers have their hands free and can create products conveying any message at all – the logo does not confine them to a certain style.
By the way, such an approach has been used by many large fashion houses.
Several decades before, the Issey Miyake logo looked less austere. You can come across a red logo with playful, plump letters appearing to be liquid. There were also versions featuring an elegant serif type.