A New Brand Day for Giant Shoppers

So, Giant Food has a new logo. Gone is the big blue "G" shot through with the rather obvious red "Giant." In its place is . . . what, exactly?

"A sailboat," said Della Duncan, 21, who was sitting outside the Starbucks at 15th and K NW earlier this week. I'd pounced on her with a copy of the grocery store's colorful new logo and demanded, like a shrink with a Rorschach inkblot, that she tell me what she saw.

"A bowl of fruit," said her friend, Julie Wojtulewicz, 20.

"A child's drawing," said Diane Washington, a fiftyish woman resting on a bench in Farragut Park. "But the lines are too straight."

Diane looked some more. "It looks to me like it has some significance to it, but the meaning of it I just couldn't tell you."

What does it mean? How about, never set off explosives in a Chuckles factory? Or, don't play paintball near the Sydney Opera House? Or, order your kippah today -- in one of four festive colors -- from Yarmulkes 'R Us?

No, what it means is time marches on, disorienting those who seek comfort in the fixed and the familiar.

You know how sometimes you go into Giant and there among the familiar store-brand items on the shelf is an interloper? The label on the can of green beans says "Giant" but it's in an unfamiliar sans serif typeface. This is from the other Giant, you realize, a different sibling in the corporate family.

In that moment -- holding that can of green beans -- I'm reminded that there are shoppers for whom my Giant would be the alien, shoppers who turn left for the dairy section instead of right. It's like that episode of "Star Trek" where Kirk and Co. end up in an alternate universe where Spock has a beard.

Oh, what stories you could tell, alien green beans!

I'm guessing that's going to happen less as Giant's new logo is rolled out over the next 2 1/2 years at all 118 of its area stores and at Stop and Shop locations up north.

I won't begrudge Giant its new look. It's not like the supermarket was a mom and pop operation rather than a food, um, giant. It's been part of a Dutch conglomerate since 1998. The new logo probably does exactly what it's supposed to do: call to mind indistinct but pleasant and vaguely foodlike thoughts.