Commercial Type reintroduces Herb Lubalin’s iconic L’eggs logotype

Helping shape the cultural aesthetic of the mid-century onwards, Herb Lubalin is a design icon whose work is still revered to this day – still featuring in many a design lecture at art schools. Following the founding of Herb Lubalin Associates, the American designer welcomed Roger Ferriter to the studio, putting him in charge of designing the packaging for what was originally Hanes-branded tights. Before long, Ferriter, under the direction of Lubalin, transformed the Hanes tights into L’eggs, a renaming that came alongside the now iconic logotype – based on ITC Grizzly – and the infamous egg-shaped packaging. Now, L’eggs is back, and with it came a daunting reimagining of the brand.

Commissioned by Britt Cobb of Cobbco and Jonny Sikov of Pentagram to rework the logotype, Commercial Type was drafted to tackle the rebrand’s revitalisation. “The initial request was deceptively simple,” Commercial Type co-founder Christian Schwartz tells us, “a light-touch update that retains the essence of the original,” all whilst rethinking the typographic proportions and details for a contemporary, digital-first context. “I have vivid memories from my childhood of this logo, and the plastic egg packaging, so I was pretty intimidated,” Christian recalls. “Herb Lubalin is a legend, and no type designer wants to wreck one of his studio’s logos.” Instead, the designer aimed to keep the logotype recognisable but make it work smaller and on screen. “Like the product and the photography,” he adds, “the logo can’t just be a relic of 1971.”

“The only artwork they were able to provide was a lumpy EPS that looked like it had been autotraced sometime in the 90s,” Christian recalls, something he says is unsurprising for legacy brands. “What may have been a quick, temporary fix during the transition to desktop design tools, is still around decades later.” This made Commercial Type’s first task to faithfully redraw the original, turning to vintage L’eggs advertisements to do so. 

“A few traits seemed non-negotiable,” Christian explains, “the bowls needed to feel like perfect circles; the tight spacing needed to stay; and g’s needed to keep their ‘chicklet’ shape,” — a reference to Ferriter and Lubalin. “The stroke endings probably needed to stay aligned on the same angle, too,” he adds, instead focusing on making surrounding adjustments to the original logotype’s proportions, overlaps and spacing. As a result, the type feels more spacious and lightweight, despite the comparable weights; a product of Commercial Type’s optical adjustments and the priority they afforded the logotype’s negative space. “I approached the revisions letter by letter,” Christina recalls, incrementally testing new micro-adjustment combinations. “I tend to think by drawing,” he adds.

Discussing the process further, Christian details how the first thing to go was the giant descending L which famously dominated the original logotype. “A typical sans l however – a vertical bar – looked ambiguous,” he adds, “so I added a curved tail, following the contour of the e,” sticking to the 70s vibe in doing so. “The relative size of the upper and lower bowls in the g’s got a lot more even,” Christian continues, discovering that the ear couldn’t be simplified without losing the chicklet. “We looked at seven or eight different shapes for the apostrophe,” he concludes, “but we all agreed that the original triangular form worked best.”