It's also a little strange (but kind of fitting!) to see "Artisan Breads" get almost equal prominence to the actual bakery sign here. The two signs also have slightly different fonts, with the bakery sign having the main font used for signage in most parts of the store (with a few bits of flair, like on the R), and the bread sign having a narrower font that's only used in a few spots in the grocery section, as far as I can tell. Artisan has a lot of fonts -- there's at least one plainer font in use too, used in the clothing section and on some of the secondary signs, and then there are special fonts only used in specific departments (like on the produce category markers, and on some of the department signs we'll see later on). That certainly doesn't help with the disjointed look in Artisan, especially compared to Banner, where that one specific, distinctive font was used for pretty much everything except the non-decor-specific elements.
That's an interesting point about 'course' and 'coarse'. I'm not a bread expert so I'm not sure which would be correct, but I'm not sure how 'course' describes bread at all unless they are having baking classes. I don't think that's the case!
ReplyDeleteI'm also not a fan of the word jambalaya (that's a southern term I think, maybe Retail Retell will understand what I mean, lol) that Kroger uses with some of their decor these days. Oh well. This rant may go better in the Seafood & Meat post than this one, but it fits here as well. My issue is not that they're using these wood designs. I think wood decor is awesome! However, the 'wood' in these Artisan packages looks totally fake. I reckon that a lot of supermarket wood paneling is fake, but at least they look credible. This does not. At least it does not in the photos, maybe it looks better in person. We don't have this decor package in Houston, at least not yet, and I consider that to be good fortune!
Yeah, I'm really not sure what they were going for there.
DeleteHonestly, in person, I didn't think the faux-wood looked any more or less fake than normal. It's not like Remix, where the wood does look horrible and fake! I'm very glad we don't have Remix out here -- Artisan certainly has some redeeming features to it, while Remix is just ugly all throughout.
I agree about the wood background -- so much so that I actually like the word cloud, because at least it covers up some of the wood instead of leaving it blank! But yeah, as far as word clouds go, on its own it's not that great.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to see the separate Artisan Breads sign also. That one I haven't seen in any other photos. Great point about all the disjointed font usage, too.
I'm glad we're on the same page about Remix, but I'm actually quite surprised at the amount of positive response I've gotten on the pictures of it that I've posted to flickr so far. I'm very curious to see if that positivity will remain once we exit the produce department, where they put in the most effort of the whole remodel!
Huh, funny! I really don't mind it in this department, though I've never been a huge fan of wood paneling period. And I guess Fred Meyer is still doing its own thing in some ways, at least!
DeleteHonestly, I didn't originally think Remix was too bad, but so far, your set is definitely pointing me more towards disliking it! I still can't decide what I think about Artisan -- some elements are good, some are bad, and I have very mixed feelings on how it goes together as a whole.