Curb Your Curve Enthusiasm

I ate at McAlister’s once or twice and the logo sort of conveys the experience and food: passable. The old serif lettering was actually kind of ambitious and properly customized to sit on a curve and have a flat top; it had some funky elements but someone spent some time on it, which they obviously ran out of when they got to the “DELI” part and just ran that in Copperplate in the shittiest way possible. The new logo drops the cowboy-saloon aesthetic in exchange for an I-don’t-know-what-they-are-going-for aesthetic… maybe it’s an Art Deco New York Deli aesthetic? Not sure at all, really. The new logo is typeset in a slab serif that is possibly Hoefler & Co.’s Archer. Whatever is it, it isn’t exactly pleasant in the way it has been customized and arranged. The “cA” ligature is awkward, the “AL” pair has been customized to remove the lower-left slab of the “L” and the final “S” feels way too big in contrast to everything else. The “DELI” part is better than before but that wasn’t too hard to improve. The border around the type is fine but it feels too constrictive. Overall, this seems like it lacks direction and conviction about what it wants to be and the execution doesn’t make up for it.