The European Union issued a call for entries for students and young designers in the 27 member states to help design a Europe-wide logo for organic products. The deadline for the competition is Thursday June 25th; the designer of the winning logo receives € 6,000.

This is actually the second attempt, as the EU introduced a new Bio logo a year ago. Yet FontBlog wrote about the similarities with the Bio logo for supermarket chain Aldi. The European Commission for Agriculture and Rural Development responded to the criticism of the German Farmers Association DBV (Deutschen Bauernverband) and the economy by withdrawing the new Bio seal.

Organic-Market.Info reported

The new EU logo has been confirmed by a majority of 265 for to 80 against, despite the discussion about the word "bio" in the logo. The new EU regulation permits the combination with graphical or textual elements referring to organic farming if it does not change the nature of the logo. Therefore, it will be possible to make clarifications ensuring the logo is associated with organic farming.

However, since the new logo is similar to the one advertised by Aldi Süd's Bio range of organics, the logo has not officially been unveiled yet by the EU Farm Commissioner. The Commission is to look into the matter with Aldi. It still remains unclear what course of action this will be, since the current logo was theoretically agreed upon by the member states. The similarity of the two logos was raised by an organic farmers' association at the Advisory Group on Organic Farming.

This case reminds me of the new corporate logo for Kraft Foods, one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world, which was unveiled three months ago. Brand New comments:

There really isn't anything good to say about this logo — if I had to dig really deep I would offer that the lowercase "k" is very pretty, but that's about it. This is such a wimpy logo for such a large corporation. The red "smile," the colorful burst, they are all hackneyed and friendly to a degree where they are just childish. And, ohmygod, is that Tekton in the tag line? I haven't seen that typeface used without sarcasm or irony in a long time.

And will you look at that terribly kerned "ft" combination. The parallel with the Aldi Bio logo case is that Brand New reader Solene noticed an uncanny resemblance with the Yoplait logo which uses a similar smile/flower design.

To finish I just wanted to mention that the Kraft Foods logo was designed with FontSmith's FS Lola, and Aldi Süd heavily uses the super family FF Fago for its headlines.