As we all know, a logo can sell something. Typography is key in branding. Logos are starting to appear much bigger everywhere, even at high-fashion brands such as Balenciaga. It used to be that you would read what someone was wearing subliminally – but now it is labelled. So it makes sense that fashion houses are starting to rethink their logos.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in some of the most significant redesigns in recent years. I was very nervous about intervening with the Givenchy logo back in 2001 because it was the founder Hubert De Givenchy’s original. There was nothing wrong with it – it just wasn’t robust enough in the contemporary competitive environment. Ultimately I just added some weight to it.

When I was commissioned to redesign the Calvin Klein logo in 2016, the situation was quite different. The original logo had been created by Calvin himself and a new creative director, Raf Simons, was coming in. The problem was not that the logo had become dated but that Raf was not Calvin. So it was necessary therefore to make a shift from the subjective to the objective, from person to brand. The original was written as a name would be, in upper and lower case, and I changed it into all uppercase to make it less personal. Strategically this form was not applied to certain archetypal products – the Calvin Klein boxer customer still wants the logo they know.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peter Saville collaborated with Riccardo Tisci to design the new Burberry logo and monogram.

The new Burberry logo came about rather out of the blue. When Riccardo Tisci took the helm last year, he wanted to define a new era in every sense, which is normal for a designer when they first arrive [Tisci took over from Christopher Bailey who was at the label for 17 years].

It’s not that the logo needed fixing but that the label would change under Riccardo. He said the single most insightful thing to unlock the problem, which was that finding the right “Burberry” for a trenchcoat label is not difficult, but putting the same “Burberry” in a chiffon blouse is.

The word “Burberry” turned out to be a gift to work with – it has interesting letters. We developed a letterform, somewhere between the institutional and something more cult – very British modern now.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The new Burberry monogram on a Hong Kong bus.

Fashion graphics are rapidly evolving, though there are historic touch points. In 1961, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé asked Cassandre [who created classic posters in the art deco period] to design the house’s logo. That was one of the great examples of fashion and graphic design working together. But the contemporary trend in disruptive collaborations was perhaps first signalled by Stephen Sprouse and Marc Jacobs in 2001 for Louis Vuitton, when his graffiti print was placed over the original monogram.

Fashion’s sociocultural position has evolved over the last five years and there has been an almost tectonic shift in the relationship between society and fashion and consequently branding is much more prominent in our everyday culture.

That the whole branded merchandising thing is so prevalent now is curious, but it does make sense. It’s so immediate – people want to have it and say so, now. It excites. Merchandise isn’t fashion but its fashionable.