While the Royal Mail logo may look cluttered, it has a good reason for this. The company wants to emphasize its long history and show it is proud of its traditions.
The roots of Royal Mail can be traced as far back as to 1516, which makes it one of the world’s oldest organizations. However, the emblems of the older periods (even if these existed) have not been preserved.
In 1974, a completely new era started for the company as it now adopted a distinctive and memorable visual brand identity.
The logo featured a crown in dark red, gold, and white, with prominent gems. Below, there was the cipher “EIIR” in gold (the reigning monarch’s initials). To the right, the writing “Royal Mail” in a clean sans serif type could be seen. The background was a bright red rectangle.
The design has grown slightly lighter and cleaner, although it is still by far richer in detail than an average modern logotype.
In the center, there is a gold wordmark placed inside a red rectangle. The script is pretty much the same as in the previous version. Above the red rectangle, there is the crown. In its turn, the crown is housed inside a white rectangle with red trim, which overlaps with the ”Royal Mail” rectangle forming a cross.
The reason why the designers decided to place the crown on the white background instead of the red one was that in this way its elements are better visible and there is even no need to use a much darker shade of red.In ad
dition to the main logo described above, there is also a Welsh variant (featuring the writing “Post Brenhinol”) and a Scottish variant (featuring a slightly different crown).
We should also mention that for about a year the company operated using a different brand identity. The name “Consignia” in blue was paired with a whirl in red, blue, and green. There was also an explanatory tagline “The new name for the Post Office Group.” The company returned to the original brand identity soon.
The Royal Mail logo is perfectly legible yet unique, which is especially obvious if you take a look at the “a.”
Royal Mail Group plc is a postal service and courier company in the UK. For most of its history, it was a public service, operating as a government department or public corporation. In 2013, the majority of its shares were sold on the London Stock Exchange. The state sold the remaining shares in 2015.