Seattle's Best new logo sparks debate: Blood coffee?

"Seattle's Best Blood Bank?" asks the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In a bid to create a "reassuring," distinctive brand for its subsidiary, Seattle's Best Coffee, Starbucks this week unveiled a new logo that has consumers and critics making comparisons to blood, oil and tears. With understated gray and red colors and a distinctively simple, rounded font, it has achieved differentiation from the florid mermaid image and green colors of its parent company: but it hasn't achieved much, so far, in the way of fans.

The company issued a statement saying it is confident in the design, created by Seattle agency Creature: "The new Seattle's Best Coffee logo maintains the brand's historic association with its name and the color red while assembling a number of universal coffee symbols, such as a drop and a cup, in an unexpected way."