zero

[rhu]

At Shabbat lunch the other day there was a bottle of Coca-Cola Zero on the table. And I couldn't help but notice that the 'r' in 'zero' looks awful. The 'z' and the 'o' appear to be Futura Demi and Futura Light, and the 'e' is a modified Futura Medium. So you'd expect the 'r' to be a Futura Book, right? But it's not. It's almost VAG Rounded, but not quite. The roudned endcaps are just so wrong next to the sharp geometry of the Futura.

What were they thinking?

[Now someone who's better at font identification than I am will, undoubtedly, explain that this is all actually various weights of a single family and the rounded endcaps on the 'r' are just fine, right? In advance, I say "Feh. It looks ugly to me."]

End of rant.

Comments

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Tastes funny, too. Kinda like a Tab retrospective, but not.

When I first (and last) had it I was too busy looking at the ingredients to notice the bottle, label, or font.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I think they're trying to create the illusion of losing weight. But it does look ugly.

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I wanted to look at a picture for reference, so here it is:
http://www.ofsaa.on.ca/championships/content/wrestling/Image/Coke_zero_1.jpg

I agree about the illusion of losing weight, and I agree that it's ugly. But the r doesn't stand out as being more ugly than the other letters, to me.

zero

[(Anonymous)]

The "z" and "e" have rounded corners also, though I didn't check the radius. It makes sense that as the weight of the characters diminishes, the rounded corners converge into a rounded endcap.

Which is a long way of saying it didn't bother me.

-pd

[devjoe.livejournal.com]

This is a new version of the Coke Zero logo. Here is the earlier logo, with all letters of "zero" the same thickness but a sort of swirling effect on the O. There is also a version where the O is normal. All three versions can be found easily in a Google Image search.