This has gotten a lot of feedback.
Yes, they could have done a much better design that would have much better legibility on a mobile screen.
No, this is *still* not necessarily a GOOD design for that purpose. I agree that it's still barely legible - though it's marginally moreso across a broad range of media, more than the original is - and yes, there are better ways that could have been done.
But the original was a worse one.
And "how we would design this, as designers" is not necessarily what gets paid for or used, for reasons specific to budgets, marketing, and corporate logic. There is how we would do this in the world we'd like to live in, then there's how budgets and deadlines actually work.
People have suggested "why don't they have a variety of different logo treatments across a range of media" for example and the reason for this is because this has scalability problems and most companies aren't going to pay to do this.
I even have a lot of thoughts about how they could have kept the man with the barrel as part of the branding while separating it from the functioning part of the logo. KFC did not ditch the Colonel; he's still their brand mascot. In older cigarette branding, the camel (later, Joe Camel) and the Marlboro Man functioned apart from the wordmark significantly enough that they could be used independently and you would recognize the brand by the wordmark OR the brand mascot.
But all in all, what's happening with Cracker Barrel is part of a trend toward what ultimately has its roots in mobile-first design. Some brands do this better than others, and Cracker Barrel is not doing this very *well*, but this is still ultimately what's behind the rebrand.
The point is that there are real, material constraints that are dictating a lot of these ugly/boring redesigns we are all grousing about. And the reality is that we are living through our phones first.
So my point still stands.
Minimalism is no longer a preference, it's a functional constraint.
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