Zalando SE is a multinational E-commerce company headquartered in Berlin, Germany. The company was established in 2008 as Ifansho. Its founders, Rocket Internet, Robert Gentz, and David Schneider, were inspired by the already famous American retailer Zappos. When they renamed their brand, they chose the name that originated from the word “zalare”, which can be translated from Italian as “making jokes”.
While the Zalando logo was inspired by a stiletto heel, this fact isn’t really obvious from the way the emblem looks. The evolution of the design has been gradual, including soft tweaks rather than total overhauls.
What is Zalando
Zalando is an online platform selling footwear, clothing, and accessories. The range includes over 4,500 brands. It delivers to customers in 23 European markets.
Originally, the company focused on selling footwear. That’s one of the reasons why the designers that worked on the logo chose a stiletto heel as a source of inspiration. The result of their work was an orange shape, which could be described as a triangle with rounded angles and convex sides. It doesn’t look very much like a stiletto heel. If it is a heel, after all, it is a rather massive one.
Nevertheless, the orange color and the sharp edge on the right, paired with the unusual type, do create a vibrant and memorable visual identity.
What makes the font unusual is the combination of small details, which are present on almost all the glyphs. For instance, many of the glyphs don’t have their traditional ends (the “a’s,” the “n,” the “d”). If one takes a closer look, it is also easy to notice that the ends of the characters have been cut in a unique way. Their basic shape isn’t truly traditional as the “o,” for instance, is neither an ellipse nor an oval but more like a rectangle with rounded corners.
In two years, the brand officially started to work in the Netherlands and France. Another important event that took place the same year was the addition of apparel to the range of products on offer. To reflect these events, the company also updated its visual brand identity.
The triangular emblem grew by far larger. Now, it was a little higher than the glyphs. The gradient was applied, to add some depth to the otherwise flat emblem.
The type remained almost unchanged, with only a couple of tweaks here and there. Note, for instance, the body of the “d” that looks more like the “o” next to it in the new version. The body of the “a” is now more rectangular, too, while the “n” adopted a diagonal top.
On the whole, the updated Zalando logo looked pretty much the same as its predecessor – it was more of an evolution than a revolution.
The orange triangle grew even more prominent. This time, the 3D effect was gone. Due to the disappearance of the lighter patches, the emblem has become more vibrant and saturated.
In 2024 the Zealand logo was redesigned one more time, keeping the original idea, but strengthening it. The shade of the orange emblem intensified, and the bark of the lowercase lettering — emboldened, making the black element brighter. The typeface of the inscription was also changed to a more stable and distinctive one.
The combination of orange and black is the essential part of the Zalando logo, which helps to make the design recognizable. Orange seems to be a great fit for the “joking” brand name. Paired with such a vivid color, black works well as it doesn’t steal the limelight and keeps the logo from being too noisy.
In spite of its seeming simplicity and excellent legibility, the type is unique and recognizable enough.