Pepsi unveiled its new electric black-and-blue logo with much fanfare last month, sparking the usual back-and-forth debate among designers and laypeople over its appeal. But an even bigger debate is bubbling up within the design community over what the beverage giant didn’t reveal about who was behind the logo.
Pepsi largely credited an in-house team for the new logo, but originally neglected to mention any of the external design firms and agencies that had a hand in crafting the logo, igniting irritation on the part of particularly young designers who worked on the redesign and were not given credit.
Creative agency Mrs&Mr was one such agency that had a heavy hand in designing the logo, but received no credit when Pepsi first announced it, two people close to the matter told Ad Age. A spokesperson for Mrs&Mr declined to comment.
Read more: Pepsi execs explain the logo redesign
Logo and font designer Ian Brignell, founder of IB Type, wrote on LinkedIn that he, too, had a hand in crafting Pepsi's new logo. Another person close to the matter confirmed Brignell was involved in the lettering and other aspects of the logo, but Pepsi did not give him credit. Brignell did not return a request for comment.
“I am proud to have helped contribute to the redesign of the iconic Pepsi wordmark,” Brignell wrote on LinkedIn. “It was a pleasure working with the PepsiCo Design & Innovation team to help bring the final details of the design to life.”
Pepsi did send an updated statement to Ad Age a day after the logo was revealed that gave a slight nod to Mrs&Mr, but the two people close to the matter said it was not a complete credits list and did not fully illustrate how much the shop did in creating the logo.
The statement read: “This was conceived, designed and led internally by Mauro [Porcini, PepsiCo’s chief design officer] and his team at the PepsiCo Design & Innovation Center and was several years in the making. Given the scale of this project, multiple partners were brought in at various stages. Most recently, Pepsi consulted Mrs&Mr.”
Industry professionals aware of Mrs&Mr's work on the logo took to LinkedIn to give the shop more proper credit.
“Incredible!!” Gopuff Head of Brand Marketing Jessica Lauria wrote on LinkedIn. “I can only imagine how exciting (and terrifying) it would [be] to redesign a classic and iconic brand like Pepsi. Only Mrs & Mr could approach this with so much boldness and simplicity.”