Designing for healthcare: The CVS Health logo history and evolution
Few business emblems have had the same impact on the pharmaceutical and medical world than the CVS Health logo. Simple but meaningful, this eye-catching and vibrant logo immediately grabs the attention of consumers in search of compassion and care. However, even if you’re familiar with the CVS heart today, you may not know much about CVS Health logo history.
Like many other world-renowned health and medical companies, the CVS Health company has updated its branding a few times throughout the years.
While aspects of the brand identity have remained consistent, such as the bright red color palette, the logo design, and even the company’s name has evolved since the company was first launched in 1963.
Today, CVS Health benefits from one of the most powerful logos in its industry, an emblem that conveys crucial concepts like integrity and accountability to customers.
Why is the CVS logo a heart? An introduction to CVS
Before we begin our adventure into CVS Health logo history, it’s worth taking a close look at the business itself, and its historical origins. Previously known as CVS Corporation, CVS Caremark, and even “Consumer Value Stores”, CVS Health is a leading American healthcare company.
The brand is responsible for a number of subsidiary brands, including CVS Pharmacy, Omnicare, and MinuteClinic.
First launched in 1963 by three partners, Sidney and Stanley Goldstein, and Ralph Hoagland, CVS was developed from another company, Mark Steven Inc, which focused on helping retailers manage health and beauty product lines.
The “Consumer Value Stores” company began as a chain of health and beauty aid stores, but quickly added pharmacies to its lineup. Eventually, the business joined the Melville Corporation, responsible for managing a string of retail companies, which helped to facilitate the growth of the CVS institution.
After periods of rapid growth during the 1980s and 1990s, CVS spun off from the Melville Corporation, and became a standalone brand, focusing on long-term development.
Today, the company is recognized as the largest healthcare brand in the world. Its dedication to providing compassionate service inspired the latest logo redesign for CVS, making the red heart an iconic symbol of the pharmaceutical industry.
CVS Health logo history: The CVS heart
Although there have been numerous changes to the CVS Health brand over the years, some aspects of the company’s visual identity have remained quite consistent. For instance, since its inception, the “CVS” company has been associated with a red color palette, and bold font choices.
Let’s take a closer look back at CVS Health logo history.
1960
One of the earliest logos introduced for the CVS Health brand, when it was still known as “Customer Value Stores”, was a combination mark. The image featured a shield-shape emblem, and an accompanying inscription in sans-serif font.
The color palette of white and red was particularly prominent here, alongside the use of two contrasting typefaces.
The “CVS” inscription on the shield is depicted in a serif font, helping the company to establish an authoritative, powerful identity, while the “Consumer Value Stores” wordmark is designed in sans-serif, with all uppercase letters, to showcase modernity and stability.
1970
In the 1970s, CVS updated its visual image with a far more simplistic emblem. The new logo featured only the letters “CVS” presented on a single line. The new font style for the design was much bolder, with thick, sans-serif characters used for each letter.
Though somewhat minimalistic, the new design was sophisticated and sleek. It helped to highlight the growing strength of the brand in the pharmaceutical space. Versions of this logo appeared both in white, and red, throughout the following years.
2007
In 2007, CVS introduced its new “Caremark” brand. After merging with the Caremark Rx pharmacy benefit management company. The company was briefly renamed to the “CVS Caremark Corporation” and a different logo was created to showcase the new name.
In addition to the “CVS” emblem from the previous design, the new emblem now featured the word “Caremark” in a serif-style font, created in the same shade of red. The letter “R” in “Caremark” included an elongated leg, with a stroke over the top to create a cross.
2014
In 2014, CVS introduced the most recent version of its logo, designed in collaboration with the Siegel+ Gale branding company. After updating its name yet again to “CVS Health”, the updated organization decided to focus its branding on highlighting its compassionate nature.
The new logo preserves part of the visual heritage of the CVS logo, with the sans-serif inscription “CVS” and the red color palette.
However, this new emblem features a slightly darker shade of red, as well as two new components. On the right, we see the word “Health” written in a sleek serif font with modern, blocky elements.
To the left of the “CVS” inscription is the now iconic CVS Heart, a relatively simplistic shape with straight lines instead of curved elements on the top. The new icon was chosen as a universal symbol, demonstrating both strength and compassion.
What does the CVS Health logo mean?
According to the company responsible for creating the latest CVS logo, Siegel + Gale, the new emblem was chosen to represent the core values of the medical company.
The heart shape was selected as a universal symbol, understood across all ages and geographies. It’s intended to highlight ideas of integrity, caring, collaboration, and integrity.
The new heart icon also appears in the logo for the CVS Health subsidiary, the CVS Pharmacy, although this brand uses a slightly different font type in the second part of its inscription. The “pharmacy” component appears in a simple sans serif font similar to Times New Roman.
Though the heart symbol used in the CVS Health logo might be instantly recognizable, it also has some unique elements to it. The design is slightly blockier than the traditional “love heart”, which may be an attempt to showcase CVS as a modern and forward-thinking brand.
The CVS Health logo: Colors and fonts
Today, the CVS Health logo is one of the most recognizable emblems in the health and medical landscape. Instantly associated with concepts like compassion and integrity, the design combines simple geometric shapes with careful font choices to connect with a huge global audience.
The most recent logo combines elements of CVS’s visual history with a focus on the future, giving the company a confident, strong, and reliable image. If you want to take a closer look at the CVS Health logo, you can find some useful resources here:
What color is the CVS Health logo?
As mentioned above, the CVS Health logo colors are one of the core parts of the company’s visual identity that have remained consistent over the years.
Although the exact shades used in the CVS Health logo color palette have evolved, the company has almost consistently relied on a combination of red, white, and black.
The bright red color provides an excellent contrast against the other two shades in the emblem, while also conveying important ideas of passion and vitality.
Hex: #CC0000
RGB: 204 0 0
CMYK: 0 100 100 20
Pantone: PMS Bright Red C
What font does the CVS Health logo use?
The CVS Health Corp logo font has evolved a few times over the years. Until the most recent update to the emblem in 2014, the company largely relied on the use of blocky, sans-serif fonts. Today, the CVS font features two distinctive typefaces.
On the left hand side is the iconic CVS inscription, presented in a bold sans-serif font, similar to RNS Camella Regular or Kelvin Slab.
On the right of the inscription, the “Health” component is depicted in a Helvetica Neue typeface, chosen to convey ideas of integrity, sustainability, and strength.
The compassionate logo of CVS Health
Looking back through CVS Health logo history, we can see the company’s iconic emblem has gone through a number of changes over time. Gradually, the CVS team has modified and refined its logo, to showcase more of its core values to customers.
The CVS emblem today, with its memorable red heart, is intended to show the brand’s compassion and care for its patients. The compelling shape in the design, combined with the two font choices, make for an instantly eye-catching and memorable healthcare logo.
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