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22 Diverse Children’s Toy & Clothing Store Logos with Commentary

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In researching logos for children’s toys and clothing stores, I assumed I would find several things which all turned out not to be true, which are outlined below. What we did find instead – a great diversity of design and style – was a pleasant surprise!
  1. My first assumption is that most logos were going to be cheap copies of the Toys R Us logo. That was not true for the most part. A few logos exhibit perhaps some influence, but it’s muted, if present at all.
  2. A second assumption was that I was going to come across many unseemly uses of Comic Sans or other derivative fonts. We did find, as expected, a few child-handwriting type logos but they evoke none of the ill-will that Comic Sans does. However, we did find some Tekton (a second-cousin of Comic Sans) and Mistral (The snazzy brush script equivalent of Comic Sans) related entries. See if you can spot them below.
  3. The most surprising finding was the use of elegant and understated logotypes with sophisticated typography. There are quite a few minimal and beautifully-crafted treatments below.
The wide array of design treatments reveals that the children’s toy and clothing market is very diverse and segmented. Since children are in every socio-economic level, it follows that that stores catering to different demographics will have different branding strategies and retail experiences to accommodate them. Of course this is obvious in hindsight. If anything, my assumptions reveal the masterful job that Toys R Us (and offshoot stores) has done in dominating the market (in my mind at least)! The research and findings were very interesting to us, and we hope for you as well. What do you think? Please comment below… faoS ababy belleni childish-things corduroy didi's estella fiddlesticks giggle grovestreet kidskraft liapela lotsfortots minijake peek potterybarnkids rightstart sproutsoup toysRus tulatupi urbankids usillygoose

About Douglas Bonneville

Douglas has been a graphic designer since 1992, in addition to software developer and author. He is a member of Smashing Magazine's "Panel of Experts" and has contributed to over 100 articles. He is the author of "The Big Book of Font Combinations", loves cats, and plays guitar.

Comments

  8. Cool Toys says

    Thanks for the post! When I first started working for a toy company I was surprised how creative and innovative so many of the toys were. This collection of logos is a great reflection of the elegant and sophisticated design of so many toys and the companies that sell them.

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