McDonald’s may be home of the Big Mac, but its branding just went minimalist.
The ad agency Leo Burnett London worked with American designer David Schwen to create a new outdoor branding campaign for McDonald’s called “Iconic Stacks.” Dollar menu aficionados will recognize McDonald’s classics like the Sausage McMuffin, Big Mac, and Filet-O-Fish by a list of ingredients in McDonald’s brand colors and what appears to be the typeface Helvetica on each sign. But there aren’t any other hints as to the brand behind the ad.
This is just the latest example of McDonald’s embracing a minimalist aesthetic. In 2016, the company unveiled new, spartan packaging to replace the busy bags and wrappers it used for years. It’s also part of a larger trend of “no-brand” branding—pared-down visuals that rely on brand equity, the consumer’s established relationship with the company, and knowledge of its products as identifiers rather than overdesigned labels and slick slogans to get the message across. Startups Brandless and M/F People both launched in 2017 with products that had so much white negative space, they were almost blank slates.
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