Early in August, Yahoo announced that it was running a 30 day campaign to introduce variations of its current logo as it prepares to unveil a new logo later this week. While this campaign may have garnered a lot of press and a lot of attention for the company, more than a few have called this a stunt, because, well, it is.
Sure, Yahoo has had that logo ever since it was launched back in the mid 1990s with the color being the only tweak that it’s ever had. Now that former Googler Marissa Mayer is on board, she wants to make her stamp at the company. There have been significant changes within Yahoo ever since she took over the CEO position and the change on logo could be another step in remolding Yahoo into a tech-oriented company, a different Yahoo
There’s been a bit of debate surrounding the stunt with design guru Khoi Vinh disagreeing with the process and calling it a “nonsense” while others just want to see where Yahoo is going with this. Vinh pointed out that at least the company isn’t letting the public vote for their favorite version.
Imagine that I threw four wheels and a mess of auto parts together, with no regard to how they actually function or work as a single machine, and said, “What do you think of this car?” Actually it’s as if I did that thirty times. And then someone came along and asked 12,000 people to vote on their favorite pile of wheels and auto parts. What good could come of that?
Running a popularity contest to determine a company’s identity is among the worst things that a person can do to their own company. It disrespects the value of the company, it shows uncertainty in leadership and vision, and it cheapens the brand. While Yahoo has put out 29 variations of its logo, it hasn’t succumbed to a popularity contest.
For crowdsourced design site 99Design though, it represented an opportunity to snatch some media attention as it ran its own Yahoo logo redesign contest. The winning design among 5000 entries and 30 finalists was by GREYdesigns which cleverly makes use of negative space to combine the letter H and the exclamation mark. Unfortunately it may lead to plenty of misreadings of the logo. How many of you would read this version as ya:oo?
Earlier today, survey company Survata published the results of a popularity contest pitting 28 of the logos presented so far against each other. It polled 12,725 online respondents and came up with one that received the most favorable reactions, which is the version for day 10. Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence that the winning version resembles the existing logo the most except without the serifs.
Personally, if a company wants to introduce a new logo, it should dispense with all this and just do it. Publish a page explaining why the company decided to change the logo and why the new logo is a better fit to the company as it is now. This parade of logos over the past month is no different to if someone were to type the word Yahoo! in several different fancy fonts.
So what does Yahoo’s new logo look like? This.
“We wanted a logo that stayed true to our roots (whimsical, purple, with an exclamation point) yet embraced the evolution of our products,” said Kathy Savitt, Yahoo’s Chief Marketing Officer.
You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.
