by chadyj on 9/5/13, 12:36 AM with 23 comments
by potatolicious on 9/5/13, 2:01 AM
You lost me here.
A logo is a marketing tool. What part of the yellow and red double arches says "hamburgers"? What part of a weird green mermaid-thing says "coffee"? What part of staggered striped blue lines say... actually nevermind, that one actually does say "IBM", literally.
A logo is more frequently abstract than it is descriptive, and the more iconic you go the less they have to do with the company's business or even its people. How does an apple with a chunk taken out of it represent high-end consumer electronics?
How do concentric red circles describe "bargain department store"? How does a strange six-pointed star describe "Wal-Mart", or any of its values, products, businesses, or people? Exactly what does the iconic cursive Coca-Cola script represent? Is the flowing script supposed to represent refreshment and thirst-quenching?
A logo's primary purpose is to be immediately recognizable and indelibly associated with a brand. That brand may evoke lifestyles, ideas, values, and people - but I assure you the logo has next to no role in that. Shrewd, persistent, on-message marketing does that. In some circles Wal-Mart's brand has become associated with gross corporate abuse, representing all that is wrong with greed and capitalism - I don't believe Wal-Mart's logo had anything to do with this branding (or rather, mis-branding).
This is a tempest in a teapot. Disregarding the fact that Yahoo openly acknowledged this as more of a plaything than a serious attempt at rebranding, the logo really doesn't have that much to do with the sort of brand Yahoo wants to build for itself, or the values and ideas they seek to represent.
by CoffeeDregs on 9/5/13, 1:46 AM
This is the kind of nonsense that results from
fundamentally misunderstanding what a logo is.
This is the kind of [blog post] that results from
fundamentally misunderstanding what a
[marketing stunt] is [and then proceeds to market/promote
the thing about which it's complaining].
by ewzimm on 9/5/13, 1:53 AM
by jey on 9/5/13, 1:15 AM
What's wrong with data? The author doesn't actually explain how it's certain that there are no metrics which could act as a reasonable proxy for the quality of a logo's "visual manifestation of all the complex ideas, values and people that fuel a company".
by elliottcarlson on 9/5/13, 1:34 AM
The Survata survey is a third party company making statistics for something that will give them self promotion - nothing wrong with that, but that is what it is.
[1] http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/57582020969/kicking-off-30-days...
by callmeed on 9/5/13, 2:52 AM
First off, this is Yahoo! and I'm sure most rockstar designers are too cool to work at/for them anyway.
Second, plenty of established brands change their logos slightly. Big deal. All these non-candidates were still purple, still a wordmark (or whatever you designers insist a "logo of letters" be called).
Third, if they want to show off a bunch of candidates or non-candidates–again–big deal. In what way could such a move possibly hurt their actual usage/bottom line (seriously, I want to know).
It's funny how much we talk about disruption in the entrepreneurial space–yet, when it comes to design the process and tenets are too sacred and established to question. As if logo design has been around for millennia.
[1] http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/125/history-of-coca-cola-logo.htm...
by asenna on 9/5/13, 2:03 AM
by nazgulnarsil on 9/5/13, 2:31 AM
by kyro on 9/5/13, 2:05 AM
by est on 9/5/13, 2:28 AM
All I see is good & old ones get closed.
Heck, Yahoo China simply decided to close all together.
by sfled on 9/5/13, 2:01 AM