Zara Home is a Spanish brand producing and selling a range of home goods, from textiles and housewares to furniture. It comes from the portfolio of the Spanish company Inditex, whose flagship brand is Zara. Zara Home is headquartered in A Coruña, Spain.
Meaning and history
The brand was launched in 2003, while the online retail store started working in 2007. The Zara logo has been pretty consistent, at least during the first couple of decades.
2003 – present
This is the example of a wordmark logo – there is only the name of the brand without a single pictorial detail. In this situation, the logo designers have to be very careful in choosing the typeface, as it’s not that easy to reflect the core values of the brand using only letters.
Here, they opted for utterly simple glyphs in an attempt to emphasize that the brand’s products are functional. We can notice that the glyphs are a little more flat than average. This is a great way to imply reliability and the promise that the products will stand the test of time.
Also, we can see that the brand’s products typically use materials that leave the impression of safety, like metal and wood (as opposed to plastic). This also is echoed in the “natural” shape of the glyphs.
2023 – now
Although the Zara logo was updated a few years earlier, Zara Home continued to use its old logo. This changed in 2023 when Fabien Baron helped the company create a new logo for its home and décor chain. Now, it can be instantly associated with the main brand as the logo features the same font and style of inscription. They simply added the word “Home” to the brand name. However, the latter featured characters that did not overlap but rather touched each other. This made this portion of the name more readable and put the focus on what the chain was all about. This rebranding step allowed the company to unify its divisions, which many companies have done long ago.
Comparison with the Zara logo
Taking into consideration the popularity of the Zara brand, it would have been pretty natural if the company had wanted to use a similar logo for the home goods branch. Surprising as it is, the two brands have utterly different visual identities. Moreover, the Zara Home logo has never in its history looked like the logo of the Inditex flagship brand.
The only thing making them similar is the overall approach and tendency towards minimalism. Both the logos feature only the wordmark in comparatively traditional glyphs that are properly aligned. There are no glyphs positioned above or below the line, for instance. However, here, the similarities end.
What is Zara Home
Zara Home, one of the brands owned by the world-known retailer Inditex, specializes in home goods and decoration objects. According to the corporate website of Inditex, the products are sold in 183 markets, and there are 70 markets with the brand’s stores.
While the Zara logo has always been set in a serif font, the Zara Home wordmark has been based on a more modern sans serif typeface. As a result, it has looked cleaner, more utilitarian.
Why doesn’t the company want to capitalize on the flagship brand’s recognizability? We can assume that the choice of a different typeface reflects the slightly different approach to product design. Home goods produced by Zara are supposed to be more practical, more functional. This is what is emphasized by the austere lines of the logotype.
The Zara logo, conversely, isn’t just basic – it hints at a more personal style. And, while it is far from a funky and elaborate design, it still has a decorative touch due to the seemingly unnecessary serifs.
Colors and font
The light gray creates an impression of understated elegance and class without interfering with the core “functional/minimalist” theme.
The typeface used for the Zara Home logo can be described as utilitarian. You’ll have a hard time trying to find something that has been used for merely decorative purposes. This is an adequate implementation of the brand’s approach to product design, which makes us believe that the logo does a good job.