The many faces of Virgin

I knew Virgin had a quite a variety of sub brands but was surprised when reading this article on VIBE to find Richard Branson’s empire is made up of more than 200 companies. Books, radio, wine, coffee, gambling, health services, basically anything you can think of.

“The extensiveness of the Virgin brand is reflected in the visual styles of the individual brands and sub-brands. In isolation, these brand identities might do their work but the problem gets visible when they are placed side by side as shown here.

Apart from the (mostly) red colour and the very recognisable Virgin script typeface, many of the visual identities of the Virgin sub-brands look like they have been made overnight by the manager of the brand himself, without having to follow many rules or guidelines.”

What do you think?

Besides the Virgin logotype there’s little to no unity between sub-brands, personally I think most of these are pretty ordinary, how about you?