Urban Decay is an American make-up brand, which was established in 1996. Today the company sells its products across the globe as is very popular among teenagers and professional make-up artists.
Urban Decay was created in 1995 as a subsidiary of the French brand of cosmetics, L’Oréal. The reasons behind the name choice, besides being a striking and memorable combination, are unclear. The brand largely produces cosmetics for women, and they’ve also been prominent in the various women rights campaigns.
Their first logotype includes their own name, written in all lowercase letters and colored a plain grey. A similar style is used for an additional inscription below, which states ‘lips and nails.’ The font is largely a simple sans-serif, although modified to look uneven and hazy. They typically placed it onto a black surface.
It’s the first instance of them using their iconic purple color, which was utilized for all these characters. The font is a simple bold sans-serif with a slight hazed effect near the rims.
The new logotype uses a purple rectangle as its base. In its center, they’ve placed the company’s name, ‘Urban Decay Cosmetics’, written in two lines of text. One line incorporated the usual two words, while the ‘Cosmetics’ bit was written somewhat below in smaller letters with wider gaps. All of these characters were colored black.
The font is largely the same design, except without the hazed effects near the borders. Moreover, there is a final detail in this logotype, which includes a stylistic sun symbol located between the two main words. They’ve colored it yellow and made it look very minimalistic.
Come 2008, they’ve essentially scrapped everything besides the two main words (‘Urban Decay’) and the sun between them. They’ve colored the entire thing light purple and added even more hazing this time around, in addition to an extremely uneven texture around the borders.
The Urban Decay visual identity is bright and remarkable, it makes the brand stand out from the list of its competitors and is instantly recognizable across the globe.
The Urban Decay logo is composed of a wordmark and an emblem, which is also a brand’s signifier, above it.
The wordmark is all capital letters that feature an old-style serif typeface, which is close to Venetian 301. The tail of the letter “R” is elongated and curved, which adds playfulness and elegance to the logo.
Under the brand’s name inscription, there is a tagline, saying “beauty with an edge” in all the lowercase cursive, similar to Lysandria.
The Urban Decay emblem is a gothic-stylized monogram “UD” also in the lowercase. The brand’s initials are bold and eye-catching. The typeface of the icon is close to Fette Fraktur font.
The purple on the white color palette of the Urban Decay visual identity is a reflection of the company’s creativity and artistic approach. It is a bright and welcoming color, with a touch of mystery.
The Urban Decay logo is stylish and modern, using three different typefaces, it still looks balanced and harmonized.
Until the 2010 redesign introduced an elegant, thin font used by the brand in the many years to come, the company mostly utilized bold sans-serif letters with tall, narrow proportions. They made them look a lot less elegant, but the look was more distinct.
Urban Decay is heavily associated with various shades of purple. All of their logotypes used this color, and it’s also present in their other branding efforts. It’s supposed to be a color of the empowered womanhood, as opposed to the usual pink associated with women, which is a lighter shade of purple with more red.