Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most recognizable brands, is in need of a cold one. A fridge cigarette, if you will.
The 140-year-old soda giant this week introduced a new brand identity meant to unify its storied look across 200 global markets. But a new typeface the company plans to use in conjunction with the rebrand stopped some observers in their tracks when it flashed across the screen in a splashy new video.
Several online commentators said this new font, in shades of white and red, was clearly the same one used on packs of Marlboro cigarettes. Soda is the new cigarette after all, said others.
But graphic designers and typographers said that, to the trained eye, the two fonts were quite different. And what may seem like a branding snafu is just a symptom of the overuse of serif fonts — characterized by their thin lines with flourishes or feet, like Times New Roman — by nostalgia-obsessed brands like Graza, Schweppes and Vacation sunscreen. Even the State Department recently made the switch from sans-serif to serif type.
“The big part of the Marlboro comparison comes down to the most simple elements, which are type and color,” said Elizabeth Goodspeed, a graphic designer and adjunct professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. But the fonts are not the same: Coke is using a custom serif design called Better With, and Marlboro’s font is Neo Contact.
Coca-Cola turned to the branding agency Jones Knowles Ritchie (JKR), best known for its work with brands like Budweiser and Burger King, to lead the project. The firm enlisted Brody Associates, a well-known contemporary graphic design firm, to create the custom typeface. According to that company’s website, the typeface was initially developed for Coca-Cola’s holiday marketing in 2023.
“We were asked to craft a new serif font family to express the brand’s unique personality, movement and playfulness,” Brody Associates’ website said.
The typeface comes in both wide and narrow styles, and includes exaggerated serifs with rounded terminals, thinned crossbars or horizontal lines, and soft joints within the crooks of the letters.
“Ultimately,” Ms. Goodspeed said, “it has a very similar vocabulary with what Marlboro does.”
James Edmondson, who owns Ohno Type in San Jose, Calif., said observers are drawing comparisons from brand memory, but not from font accuracy. While the Better With type shares some similarities, Marlboro’s Neo Contact is far more condensed, or compressed horizontally, he said. Additionally, he said, the serifs of the current Marlboro logotype “feature devastatingly handsome ‘slab’ serifs — substantial terminals smacked on with no curved transition or ‘bracket.’” Coke’s serifs, on the other hand, are brackets; every corner is slightly rounded.
Put simply, it was an “unlucky time” for this to happen, Mr. Edmondson said, especially just as the term fridge cigarette — having a soda instead of stepping outside for a smoke break — has been gaining popularity.
Or could the similarity between the typefaces be Coke’s attempt to capitalize on nostalgia for another brand, as some have suggested online?
JKR referred questions to Coca-Cola, which did not respond to a request for comment. Marlboro’s parent company, Altria, also did not respond. But in an interview with the blog Creative Bloq, executives at both companies emphasized a renewed focus on Coca-Cola’s legacy.
One of the most significant sources of inspiration, they said, was an investor book from the 1970s, when Coca-Cola first introduced the Arden Square, a catchall term for the components of the company’s highly recognizable logo: the Coca-Cola name in Spencerian script and a white ribbon set on a bright red background.
“We took the identity apart, iconic element by iconic element, and stress-tested everything,” Dave Balsamello, a creative director at JKR, told the blog. “How large can the script become? How tightly can you crop the ribbon? How small can an asset get? How much can the color change? What’s the right Coca-Cola red?”
The days of advertising on hand-painted oilcloth signs at Atlanta pharmacies are long gone. And being a global, multibillion-dollar corporation means that people are going to have opinions.
Mark Pendergrast, who wrote “For God, Country, and Coca-Cola,” a history of the company, said he doubted Coke realized the similarities between its new font and Marlboro’s. But what the outcry really shows, he wrote in an email, is “how fanatical Coca-Cola fans and critics are.”
