Safeway Logo PNG
Safeway is an American supermarket chain founded in the 1920s and today the second largest in the Northern United States. Since 2015, Safeway has been a subsidiary of Albertsons Companies and has more than 1,300 stores in the United States and Canada. But the company’s market isn’t limited to that, as outside of North America Safeway owns a 49% stake in Mexican grocery chain Casa Ley.
Meaning and history
So, Safeway is a large supermarket chain that sells groceries and general merchandise. You can find items in categories such as bakery, deli, flowers, and medicines in the chain’s stores. Safeway is also a coffee shop and gas station. The company tries as much as possible to become the destination number for its customers by constantly expanding its assortment. For example, in recent years, the company has increased the range of organic products on its store shelves.
Safeway’s history is commonly traced back to 1926, but it began a decade earlier when Marion Barton Skaggs inherited his father’s grocery store in Idaho and Samuel Seelig opened a grocery store in Los Angeles. Both companies grew and grew and in the middle of the 1920s, Skaggs bought a competing chain. That’s how Safeway came to be.
By the way, the name for the chain was very appropriate for its time, the Great Depression. The thing is that when paying for goods in Safeway stores, customers could not make purchases on credit, and accordingly, were insured against debt. So by shopping at Safeway, they were taking the “safe route”.
In terms of visual identity, Safeway has been growing and progressing, just like in its business model, yet the accent in the company’s badge was always made on the capital “S”.
1925 – 1936
The original Safeway badge, designed in the 1920s, featured elegant white lettering written across a solid black rectangular banner with delicate white framing inside. The first and last letters of the inscription were enlarged and had their tails elongated, making up one straight underlined for the wordmark. This badge stayed in use by the company for the first ten years of its history.
1936 – 1952
In 1936 the Safeway visual identity became extra-bright, due to the use of a new scarlet-red and white color palette. The heavy serif lettering in the uppercase of a contoured typeface was written in white across a solid red rectangular banner. There were no other elements present on the badge. This version was used by the Safeway chain for more than a decade.
1952 – 1981
The redesign of 1952 was held by the famous Landor Associates agency. The professional team has created something completely new for the large chain of supermarkets. The new concept consisted of a super laconic emblem, with the stylized red “S”, drawn with a smooth wavy line, inscribed into a circular black frame with the tails of the character merging into the black line. This was the most long-lasting version of the Safeway badge.
1981 – 2005
In 1981 the S-emblem was modernized. The tails of the letter got sharper, and the circular black frame turned into two dark-red brackets with rounded angles. The emblem was drawn against a white background and accompanied by a bold black wordmark, written in the uppercase of a sharp and sleek serif typeface with flared ends of the bars.
1999 – 2005
A new color palette was adopted by the Safeway chain in 1999. This fuchsia pink and white emblem was used by some of the company’s stores along with the badge, designed in 1981. The “S” and the brackets turned white and got placed on a rounded solid pink square with arched sides and softened contours. As for the lettering part, it was also set in pink and has a smaller “Food & Drug” tagline set under it.
2005 – Today
The redesign of 2005 has introduced a laconic and super stylish version of the Safeway logo, keeping the recognizable idea of the Landor badge from the 1950s. The emboldened and refined white “S” is now drawn in a solid red rounded square icon, above the modern black wordmark in a distinctive geometric sans-serif typeface.
Font and color
The sleek uppercase lettering from the primary logo of the Safeway supermarket chain is executed in a modern and quite minimalistic sans-serif typeface, which is Geometric 415 Medium.
As for the color palette of Safeway’s visual identity, it is based on a classy and powerful combination of red, black, and white, which has always been associated with high quality and professionalism.
