[HN Gopher] Why do so many brands change their logos and look li...
___________________________________________________________________
Why do so many brands change their logos and look like everyone
else?
Author : herbertl
Score : 482 points
Date : 2022-07-09 23:58 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (velvetshark.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (velvetshark.com)
| asciiresort wrote:
| All those fashion brands changed their logos around 2018, with
| the exception of YSL back in 2012.
|
| In 2012, Hedi Slimane took over the helm of YSL, notorious for
| the minimalist brand change dropping the Yves from Saint Laurent,
| but also revitalizing the brand. In 2018, Hedi Slimane became
| C.D. Of Celine, which has always been touted for minimalism, and
| made the already minimalist brand even more minimalist by
| dropping the accented e. There is a mixture of independent
| fashion brands there, but the majority of the luxury fashion
| market has been bought up by LVMH and Kering. Those parent
| companies create a network and platform where brands cross
| pollinate, in the same way YC serves as an exchange of ideas
| between SF style startups. In practice, this means pressuring
| subsidiaries to follow the model that has worked for other
| brands, within and outside the family. Checkout dietprada on
| Instagram where they call out plagiarism commonplace in the
| fashion industry.
|
| My theory is that brand designers who work in tech are influenced
| by fashion and general product design, which follows apparel.
| First, trend-setting luxury brands have expanded ready to wear
| lines and more generally became more accessible, rather than
| something reserved for the ultra elite socialites. This means
| more exposure, familiarity. Second, designers make significantly
| more money than in decades prior. Following in the footsteps of
| Google, companies found that better design leads to more money.
| In prior decades, UI/UX designers didn't exist. The profession
| matured relatively fast compared to the head start software
| engineering had. I remember the HCD ( human centered design )
| department used to be really in the weeds about the science of
| ergonomics, and the role UI/UX barely existed. Then the other
| class of UI people in the early web were graphic designers. That
| or engineers with design sensibilities. With higher tech
| salaries, art and design schools have since pivoted towards these
| career placements. Meaning, there are now established design
| departments within tech companies, and these departments are
| comprised of people whose hobbies revolve around design and
| fashion. All of this creates a feedback loop where "good design"
| is based on its similarity to other good design. In the same way
| engineers didn't get fired for electing IBM and frontend
| engineers picking React, designers, at least the ones in a
| megacorp, designers won't get fired for electing Sans Serif.
|
| I'd like to blame Hedi Slimane for all of this.
| zoom6628 wrote:
| Methinks symptomatic of the "bullshit jobs" scenario. Another
| poster pointed out about need for low risk legacy, another points
| out change for something to do. All valid and clatter with what I
| have observed in my life. Also I have seen brand logo changes as
| part of a subtle message that company has changed in some way,
| usually trying to change away from some negative press, and the
| logo is a cynical attempt to show a new direction yada yada.
|
| For my 2c corporate logos have gone from art to BS as in Boring
| Shit, over last 20 years.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Example here: https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/uber-
| promises-to-do-b...
|
| Once Dara took the reigns. All is forgiven since it's a new
| logo now right?
| dotcoma wrote:
| Apart from Spotify, all the other tech logos look worse now than
| they used to...
| causality0 wrote:
| Don't forget it's not just company logos but also product logos
| within a company. Every Google product is now an
| indistinguishable rainbow circle.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| It probably makes it easier to have the same sweatshop make all
| the fashion brands' products, and thereby increases their margin.
| stayux wrote:
| My theory on this "problem" is that we are already data and echo
| chamber-driven society. If people "en masse" decide that they
| have had enough, uniformity and sameness will go away:)
| ben_w wrote:
| Back in the 90s, my school teachers said that advertising is a
| balance between standing out and not being so different you're
| just weird.
|
| I wonder if Party Cannon still uses the incongruous logo?:
| https://www.creativebloq.com/logo-design/death-metal-logo-pa...
| seydor wrote:
| I think in the 90s it was more about standing out. and being
| provocative if possible , since there was very little that was
| off-limits
| im3w1l wrote:
| Of the tech companies, I prefer the new versions of Ebay and
| Spotify. I think the old ones were a bit much. However I think
| ebay should have kept the darker blue, the new one looks too
| similar to Google. Pinterest looks better before.
|
| The rest are about as good as before. But if we go into details.
| Microsoft's new color choice is too boring, like at least make it
| a more assertive darker shade of gray. I like the chonky, low-
| center-of-gravity look of the previous facebook. Airbnb is a bit
| more legible in the new version. Google went from playful to more
| rigid. I don't like the t in new Revolut (amusingly, because it
| goes against the grain).
|
| Edit: Less sure about spotify after thinking some more.
| dpeck wrote:
| standing out is not something that established big companies are
| interested in doing. Generally they're much more interested in
| expanding their share of whatever market they're in than
| expanding to new markets.
|
| That is much different than being a "new" thing where being
| unique and different was valued to entice new customers and
| create/find markets that didn't previously exist.
|
| The art and branding around corporations will reflect that over
| time. It's a small glimpse into what is happening in technology
| as a whole as it matures and "professionalizes".
| midnitewarrior wrote:
| Why do teenage girls often get the same hairstyles?
| credistick wrote:
| When you are a young company you want to stand out, you want to
| have personality. You are disruptive, championing some new way of
| doing things.
|
| When you are more mature (or at least want to seem like it) you
| adopt more mature brand language.
|
| No more the volatile, brash youth with risky new ideas. This is a
| trusted brand, for adults.
| begueradj wrote:
| I think it's due to human nature: we tend to imitate others to
| feel we belong to them. For example in countries where specific
| "information" or propaganda is repeated over and over, the
| majority of people tend to comply to that new propaganda.
| t_mann wrote:
| Since taste is necessarily personal, here's my personal opinion:
| 100% of the tech logos look (significantly) better in the right
| column, and maybe ~50% of the fashion ones (though most are close
| to indifferent there). The only one that I feel will be dearly
| missed is the Rimowa one, Balmain also feels less special now.
| Balenciaga and Burberry weren't an improvement, but neither side
| looks great there imho.
| lqet wrote:
| Because the scientific arguments for updating the brand are _too
| damn convincing_. How else would you improve the gravitational
| pull in your brand universe?
|
| https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell...
|
| Just look at the DNA research they have done (page 12)!
|
| Dimensionalize exponentially.
| dl7 wrote:
| Looks like a load of bogus but I love it!
| listenallyall wrote:
| It's kind of easy to pick and choose specific examples, ignore
| counters, and claim to prove a point. Tiffany & Co, Canali,
| Rolex, Jimmy Choo, Ferragamo, Prada, Hermes, Bally, Dior, etc.
| all still have serif fonts (or cursive in Ferragamo's case). And
| I'm not sure Burberry has changed -- I walked by a store this
| week and it still had the traditional logo above the door.
| dagmx wrote:
| IMHO the simplest explanation is that style is cyclical, and
| we've entered into a minimalist, almost brutalist, period and
| these brands are simply skating to where the puck is.
|
| Will this design trend last? Probably not but doing a rebrand to
| freshen things up every few years is cheap enough, while the
| value in being "current" is very much worth it.
|
| A lot of those logos looked old fashioned and almost early 2000s
| in comparison, which tech forward folks probably don't care
| about, but it's subtly picked up by the average consumer.
|
| You'll notice this even for companies that haven't changed their
| brand in ages like Apple. All of Apple's branding and
| presentation style has changed in similar ways over the past few
| years.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Agree. They all look more modern in the new versions. It's just
| a natural cycle of design, look at the history of logos for
| longer lived brands and you see the same thing.
| nine_k wrote:
| The trick is to look quaint without looking old-fashioned. Few
| can pull it off. Maybe the Ferrari logo has this quality.
|
| Even better it is to look timeless; maybe the Mercedes Benz
| logo has this quality. These are really really few: say, Apple
| had to rework their iconic bitten apple logo.
| vosper wrote:
| Coca-cola and McDonalds are probably two good examples here.
| Especially Coca-cola.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The hard thing to say, though, is "does Coca-cola's logo
| show timeless design?" or "Is Coca-cola's logo timeless
| because they just decided to never change it, and coke is
| such an iconic product that there is no need to?"
|
| I mean, the latter part appears to be pretty much what this
| article is arguing. Just look at the Pinterest change, from
| a nice, cursive logo to boring, generic block letters.
| Coca-cola may have made the same boring transition if
| somehow minimalist sans serif was all the rage in the late
| 1800s.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| At some point, if yours is the only one left standing
| from that era, it becomes timeless. Coco-Cola management
| was very conservative throughout most of the 20th
| century.
| nine_k wrote:
| Do you remember Coca-Cola logo ridiculed often? I don't,
| so I mark it as "timeless", not "stuck in time".
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| Coca Cola did make the transition with new Coke which is
| still used for Diet Coke
| nine_k wrote:
| Coca-Cola indeed! They changed the _taste_ , but the logo
| stays.
|
| Interestingly, they experimented with it in the early days
| [1], but the design from 1887 is basically what we have
| now, with minimal amendments.
|
| [1]: https://designbro.com/blog/brand-logos/coca-cola-logo-
| visual...
| listenallyall wrote:
| I think McDonald's has the best logo of all time. Coca-
| Cola's pretty much requires the text -- the stripe alone
| probably isn't universally recognizable. And Diet Coke,
| Coke Zero, etc all have variations. Meanwhile the Golden
| Arches don't need any accompaniment, they are plastered on
| _everything_ , and, just like I used it above, the logo
| itself has a name.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Two words: Focus groups.
|
| Logos end up looking the same, for the same reason (e.g., autos)
| end up looking the same (i.e., color options).
|
| That said, what gets lost on logos is they are supposed to be an
| identity, not a badge for joining "the crowd." Instead, unique is
| abandoned for fashionable and/or trendy.
| drivers99 wrote:
| I'm currently (literally: I just switched apps from kindle to
| browsing HN moments ago) reading "Why Greatness Cannot Be
| Planned", chapter 8, "Unchaining Innovation" and they are
| currently pointing out how consensus leads to a washed-out,
| bland sameness.
|
| A corollary that they wrote is that if you want to explore
| innovative ideas, you could look for something that splits
| expert opinions sharply.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Funny enough I'm about to start "Different" by Youngme Moon.
|
| https://hbr.org/2010/05/why-being-different-makes-all
|
| It's also why I believe "Zero to One" is essential. In short,
| move into a space of less and less competition. Obviously
| being the same prevents that.
|
| Btw, "Blue Ocean Shift" has the same msg. A bit long winded
| but in the end solid stuff.
| kradeelav wrote:
| (disclaimer: lead brand manager, been at the table of a lot of
| the meetings where these logo changes happen.)
|
| There's a few different reasons (especially depending on the
| company) why that these happen, but I personally think it boils
| down to two unintuitive quasi-psychological reasons.
|
| - When suits are fumbling around looking for a new shiny project
| that'll give them a sense of "legacy" and their fingerpints all
| over (that won't affect immediate profits), somewhere in
| marketing and brand is usually the first place they'll grab. If
| wins, fantastic, they've secured their legacy both in a career-
| spanning sense and at the company itself with a bonus. If it
| fails disastrously, easy enough to quietly switch back to the old
| and to save face by tackling a different project.
|
| - Sort of relatedly, a lot of marketing suits hate feeling "left
| out" of trends; it's something I loathe about the industry, the
| hyper-focus and optimization of being at the crest of new trends
| (when arguably they're usually shittier than the previous ones).
| Oftentimes their entire salary / sense of purpose of being at the
| job is tied into with presenting the latest and greatest, and
| insecure designers will be too happy to be enablers.
|
| (My opinion may be a minority of the industry itself as if it
| were me, we'd be back to 90's era logos for the sheer zany
| quality.)
| xorcist wrote:
| It's all good and well blaming "the suits", but the same thing
| happens with the techies.
|
| How many working products haven't been rebuilt just to
| incorporate some tech du jour?
|
| The fact that a good number of people gets fresh CVs in the
| process is never held against it.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| While I totally agree that logos tend to be changed far too
| early and too often, at some point the logos do start to look
| outdated, either because the company evolves or because the
| world is moving.
|
| For example, the quirky eBay logo was a great fit for a startup
| during the dot com boom, but the way typical websites look
| changed dramatically since then and the company became much
| bigger and professional.
|
| At some point, a logo that doesn't get updated does start
| screaming "this is a company stuck in a time several decades
| ago".
| pvaldes wrote:
| Sometimes there is a legit motive to change.
|
| If your competitor starts diluting your brand mimicking your
| package with a cheaper replacement with the same colors, you
| need to offer some different to keep the brand alive. Had
| seen that before in milk packages (with a successful defense
| changing the lid shape)
| virtualritz wrote:
| Ex typographer and logo designer here (I didn't work in that
| profession since 25years but I know a bit a about it).
|
| > [...] at some point the logos do start to look outdated,
| either because the company evolves or because the world is
| moving.
|
| This is simply not true. If your logo looks outdated, 10
| years in, it was never a good logo to start with.
|
| Logos need to be timeless.
|
| They also need to to be recognizable though.
|
| These are difficult to align constraints and only a tiny
| fraction of logo designers manage to produce logos that
| satisfy both.
|
| Otherwise I agree 100% with parent. Suits meddling in affairs
| they have no clue of. Been there and seen that at two
| companies with previously good logos.
| watwut wrote:
| This kind of like saying refactoring is about bored
| programmers stroking egos, because if you need to refactor,
| original code was not good to begin with.
| virtualritz wrote:
| TLDR; Comparing code reviews to logo redesign is
| comparing apples to oranges.
|
| Both are about change - as is caring for your newborn
| when it shat it's diapers.
|
| Or another one: it's like me saying what you said is like
| saying 'Penne Arrabiata' is a dish "that needs
| revisiting" because it hasn't been changed since yonx.
|
| Millions of Italians would beg to differ. ;)
| chris_wot wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with the old Burberry and Yves St
| Lauren logos.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| I fail to see how this explains anything about why brands
| change their main logo to the same dull style.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Generally there is design language for every decade or more.
| Not following this unless it is sufficiently old or well
| established just looks dated in a wrong way.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I work in the UX space. My team presents new designs and
| features to customers before building them. We actually sit 1
| on 1 with a customer and show them mockups and such of some
| future idea for the product. One of the questions asked to
| customers is something to the effect of, "Looking at design
| A, would you say it looks more or less 'modern' than design
| B?" This is usually the justification higher ups use for
| making these changes. I'm not saying this is a good way of
| product direction (do customers really know what they want?)
| but this is usually how the justification happens.
| sumedh wrote:
| Play safe, if you come up with a wacky logo and it fails then
| your reputation suffers.
| smcg wrote:
| Sounds like they provide negative value to the company. They
| are subsidized by the people who actually do work.
| dalbasal wrote:
| It's also fun, easy and exceptionally easy to spend a precise
| budgetary on a branding exercise.
|
| Marketing these days is full of technical details. Digital
| campaign statistics. CRM. Automation. Tiny optimisations,
| analytics and such.
|
| Branding lets everyone be involved. Everyone can have a say. A
| logo change rarely succeeds _or_ fails. You don 't have to know
| anything to make decisions or sound smart. Everyone notices it.
| Crusty old board members notice, and might comment on the work.
| Etc.
|
| It's high visibility, low effort, low stress, low bar work.
|
| I'm not implying that great branding doesn't exist. Most of the
| examples here though... they just changed fonts to whatever is
| most fashionable now.
| greenthrow wrote:
| > (disclaimer: lead brand manager, been at the table of a lot
| of the meetings where these logo changes happen.)
|
| This is not a disclaimer. This is, in fact, the opposite of a
| disclaimer. It is a "claimer", if you will, claiming experience
| and authority on the topic.
|
| A disclaimer is when you state a reason why people might want
| to discount your opinion, usually due to a conflict of
| interest. E.g., "I work at Revolut."
| rocketbop wrote:
| Yes, it's rather a source
| ttgurney wrote:
| > A disclaimer is when you state a reason why people might
| want to discount your opinion, usually due to a conflict of
| interest. E.g., "I work at Revolut."
|
| I believe the word you both are looking for is "disclosure":
|
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/115850/disclaime.
| ..
| greenthrow wrote:
| No, I was not looking for a different word. Yes,
| disclosures are one reason for a disclaimer, and the
| example I gave is one. But you might also do a disclaimer
| like "I have no first hand experience, but many friends
| have told me..." again, a disclaimer is exactly as I said,
| reasons to take the information with a grain of salt or to
| be aware of the limitations (e.g. legal disclaimers like on
| prescription medicine commercials.)
| yonrg wrote:
| Humans :eyeroll:
|
| Changes make or should make the impression of progress.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I think number 2 is too grandiose. It's probably closer to
| "change == growth || progress"
| pcurve wrote:
| Sometimes loyal consumers fight back and win.
|
| https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2015/05/what-to-learn-fro...
|
| Dropbox rebrand was panned as well.
| https://www.dezeen.com/2017/10/11/dropbox-rebrand-logo-visua...
| ehnto wrote:
| > Sort of relatedly, a lot of marketing suits hate feeling
| "left out" of trends;
|
| Oh yeah definitely related, it's an existential crisis for
| marketing/media to not be producing something new. To be fair
| to them, software developers are worse I feel.
|
| If these industries were pragmatic, there'd be far less work to
| do. Instead, we re-brand/re-build every year, lest we all lose
| our purpose and our jobs.
| naniid wrote:
| This probably is the reason for why they go down the path of
| changing the logos.
|
| But why they look similar is because, in the past logo drafts
| used to be hand-drawn by artists and now its being done by
| digital artists who first start with available library of
| fonts.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Hand drawing could be in effect for logos that haven't been
| redesigned in centuries.
|
| But there's no way the first and subsequent Revolut logos
| have been influenced by radical tool changes. The same would
| go for Spotify or Yahoo, or airbnb.
|
| Also a company requesting a whimsical logo would have no
| difficulty having it hand drawn if it fit the bill. There's
| just way less demand for that, we'd need to look at "natural"
| adjacent businesses to get that vibe (e.g.
| https://naturalhihoney.com/ ), or restaurants.
| dagmx wrote:
| I know people like to say "it was better in the old days" and
| wax nostalgic, but a lot of the logos in the before section
| were designed when digital tools were the norm.
|
| Even with digital tools, many designers will still sketch
| them out.
|
| The logo designs here are simply following what's on trend,
| rather than a reflection of tooling changes.
| jacobsimon wrote:
| Another important point not mentioned yet: Rebrands are
| rarely done internally.
|
| Companies hire external brand design agencies, and they tend
| to hire a few of the same well-known ones, which also set the
| trends for the rest of the industry.
|
| - 72andsunny (Dropbox, Instagram, eBay)
|
| - Moving Brands (Netflix, Asana, BBC, Eventbrite)
|
| - Red Antler (Casper, Alto, etc)
| ben_w wrote:
| So, I'm guessing that half a dozen people at those design
| agencies retire and we get to finally go back to some fun,
| playful, skeuomorphic UI? Perhaps steampunk, with AR
| glasses giving us notifications by ticker-tape? And 3D
| modeling tools that look like Bryce used to?
| prerok wrote:
| Right. And they want their work to be recognizable, so they
| would be hired by the next company, so they create similar
| logos :)
| irrational wrote:
| This answer agrees with my experience. Business people want to
| redesign sites, logos, etc. because it gives them something to
| do, gives them something to report and show to their higher
| ups, makes them feel useful, allows them to expense field
| "research" trips, allows them to expense offsite meetings with
| design consultants, allows them to do something fun instead of
| focusing on their real, but harder, business priorities, etc.
| sfifs wrote:
| This is the right answer. Empirically, continuity of brand
| assets actually drives higher brand recognition and
| awareness/shoppability advantage over time, particularly for
| consumer goods. Look through the disastrous Tropicana branding
| change example for how wrong can changing familiar assets go.
|
| However, the marketing teams get bored of their branding and
| ads way way before consumers do - after all each consumer see a
| big brand in a branding context maybe half a dozen to a dozen
| times a month for a few seconds at a time in advertising or
| stores. The marketing teams see it every day every hour :-)
|
| So they naturally desire for change - exacerbated by the fact
| that the "experts" in marketing agencies or relevant in house
| functions have no incentive to tell them different as they make
| money off of the change :-)
| javajosh wrote:
| _> However, the marketing teams get bored of their branding
| and ads way way before consumers do_
|
| Maybe the marketing teams from 12 big non-competing companies
| can "rotate" and do the work for a new company every month,
| coming back "home" once a year. Keep the eyes fresh.
| twoodfin wrote:
| This is probably a workable theory on why so many companies
| outsource the advertising / branding aspects of their
| marketing to specialized firms.
|
| (You're also basically describing the plot structure of
| _Mad Men_!)
| nine_k wrote:
| At this forum some like to ironically refer to things like
| "frontend framework of the month", meaning novelty that
| brings no discernible benefits at best.
|
| Apparently marketing may have it worse.
| rexpop wrote:
| > suits are fumbling around looking for a new shiny project
| that'll give them a sense of "legacy" and their fingerpints
| all over
|
| Why?
| Scarblac wrote:
| It's what top managers do. New branding, merger or
| acquisitions, shiny new building, use the PR to move on to
| better job.
| Jenk wrote:
| You aren't a disruptor if you don't disrupt. You can't
| claim to be a change maker if you don't make change. You
| aren't a challenger if you don't challenge.
|
| Etc. Etc. etc.
| defrost wrote:
| Fear of doing nothing and somebody noticing the nothing and
| then firing them.
| pmontra wrote:
| And also they have to fill the cv with something.
| Somebody wrote about securing their legacy at a company.
| Stay two years at company X and doing only standard stuff
| is not a great way to get a better job somewhere else. Of
| course doing useless stuff should be even worse but it's
| hard to tell what's useful and what not.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Sounds like a good way of filtering out executives. If
| they write that they changed branding, then dock them
| some points...
| ratww wrote:
| It's funny how it's the "suits" that are the money burners and
| productivity destroyers. While individual contributors are left
| to obsess about productivity. A sign that we all can afford to
| collectively slow down.
| [deleted]
| tomc1985 wrote:
| It is absolutely disgusting how much gets done in this world
| simply because someone needed to stroke their ego. Legacies,
| bonuses... pah. Pathetic how predictably selfish we humans
| really are.
|
| What really strikes me is the lack of customer centricity in
| all this. Do they want the change? Do they think the existing
| look is outdated? Do they like the old look? Pah. Who cares! I
| have a legacy to cement and a bonus to secure!
|
| (Besides the usual MBA word-vomit mumbo jumbo like 'modern
| utility', but we all know those are just made up excuses)
|
| Maybe a brand should just be... a brand. A brand isn't your
| friend, it isn't human, it isn't alive, and it most certainly
| only exists to take your money and put it in their account --
| and, in tech, more often than not through some rent-seeking
| subscription model because nobody likes us actually owning
| anything anymore.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| It is confusing to me: a brand at its very core is ego and
| legacy. That ego and legacy happen to be shared among a whole
| company, but it's 100% a "we vs the others", and the history
| behind the identity.
|
| What you seem to be looking for is not a brand but a label or
| a certification perhaps ?
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Feeling, maybe, but only because it is intentionally
| cultivated to be so. Large shifts in company branding don't
| usual signal an equally large shift in the company's
| culture, though they might say otherwise.
|
| If IKEA or Apple suddenly changed their aesthetic, they are
| probably going to be pushing out the same products... just
| with different packaging. The companies themselves remain
| the same as they were. People will have different feelings,
| depending on their reaction and how the branding people
| message this change, but ultimately the move is pointless
| as everything continues as before.
|
| For an extreme example, look at the Blackwaters or
| Facebooks of the world.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'd argue branding and company culture are independent
| only if branding is weak in the first place.
|
| Apple has a very strong brand, and if tomorrow they
| switched their logo and brand image to a cursive Ford
| style blue one it would need a strong justification
| behind it, a ton of employees would see such a change in
| a very negative way, and possibility think long and hard
| about their career path going from there, as the
| management might have lost their way.
|
| Or the other way: when "Apple Computers" became "Apple"
| it wasn't some random surface level change, but a
| reflection of how the company had deeply changed focus
| compared to its earlier days.
|
| Branding and culture are rarely decoupled, and if any of
| those are strong enough they'll change in lockstep.
|
| PS: on brand and logo "refreshes", like Peugeot moving to
| more a stylized lion, while those are arguably cosmetic,
| there is the same philosophy applied to the worker pool
| with "new blood" introduced to the company and processes
| and manufacturing moving along. In a way, the same thing
| is happening below and above the surface.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Perhaps not the best example. Apple is not just a brand,
| it also has a near religious following. Apple could
| change their logo to a high resolution photo of an actual
| apple with 'Apple Computers' again as their main brand
| name, and a very vocal fanbase will praise them for their
| uniqueness, avant-garde thinking (different), and
| daringness. Others will follow, and in two years time KFC
| will have a logo with a high resolution photo of (a)
| Colonel Sanders and 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' below it.
|
| It's probably inevitable. We've reached peak abbreviation
| and minimization anyway.
| eternityforest wrote:
| I'm not so sure. They wouldn't lose customers immediately
| but would annoy them.
|
| Apple is defined by negative space. They are not
| complicated. They are not the same as everyone else. They
| are not spying on you(Or so some claim).
|
| All the apple fans I know talk about simplicity and
| privacy more than any specific feature, and a lot of them
| appreciate simple things in all areas of life.
|
| Changing the logo might really mess with the sense of
| simple quality.
| zauguin wrote:
| Take macOS. It moved from "Mac OS X" over "OS X" to
| "macOS" which was (AFAICT) purely a "random" surface
| level change (especially with the "remove Mac only to
| reintroduce it later and remove the X instead" move),
| even though "Mac OS X" was a rather well established
| brand.
| smcl wrote:
| I can kinda understand the desire to simplify it to
| "macOS". Through the years it was
|
| - System 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
|
| - Mac OS 8
|
| - Mac OS 9
|
| - Mac OS X
|
| And it remained at "X" for about 16 years, with sometimes
| substantial releases being distinguished just by a big
| cat name or a decimal point. Arguably the "X" part
| stopped being part of the versioning, and simply became
| part of the brand but it was definitely redundant and
| "mac oh-ess-ex" is at best a bit clunky to say.
|
| It certainly wasn't _necessary_ , but I can at least
| understand why they'd want to do it.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| It's technically pronounced OS "ten".
| notriddle wrote:
| Being version "10" for fifteen years is kinda stupid,
| though. It's the same problem Linux had with being on
| version 2.6, seemingly forever.
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah it probably is, I'd be interested to see how many
| people use that pronunciation though
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Mac OS X was a product line name among others, and
| product lines come and go. It's also a brand, but nothing
| compared to a company brand.
| dangus wrote:
| I don't think it was all that well established. For one
| thing, people didn't know whether to say "X" or "10."
|
| macOS also aligns with capitalization of iOS, which is
| the more widespread brand.
| mmsimanga wrote:
| It isn't just the logos that change the same companies have
| diversity officers as if this will change the tast of the
| orange juice. As is customary I have to add I am a black male
| least I am accused of being insensitive.
| indigochill wrote:
| > As is customary I have to add I am a black male least I
| am accused of being insensitive.
|
| It's good you clarified that, because I know black males
| are never insensitive.
|
| I tease. But I do see the value of being mindful of
| cultural differences in companies that employ a diverse
| workforce. No, it has nothing to do with the taste of the
| orange juice, but understanding where your colleagues are
| coming from is still productive. The typical employee
| probably is unaware of cultural differences that might come
| up with colleagues from cultures they're unfamiliar with.
| I'm thinking mainly here of cultures that have different
| values or practices from the dominant culture in the
| company, like a devout Muslim or Orthodox Jew working for a
| secular American company.
|
| Though, yes, people who build their career on diversity
| tend to go a bit further than just preventing stuff getting
| lost in translation across cultural divides, probably for
| similar reasons to why brands can't just be left alone.
| mmsimanga wrote:
| Not only am I a black male I also live and work in
| Africa. That might explain my dig at diversity because we
| are mostly black people also changing logos for seemingly
| silly reasons.
| amelius wrote:
| Imho when a company gets penalized by watchdogs, it should
| also affect the logo, so customers can see that something
| happened. E.g. a watchdog could take a bite out of a logo or
| place an ugly watchdog symbol next to it.
| cwillu wrote:
| This technique would probably still work:
| https://i.imgur.com/GMpoCh9.jpg
| amelius wrote:
| Except the watchdog gets to change your logo, not you.
| eternityforest wrote:
| Like an abatement in heraldry!
| bell-cot wrote:
| Cynical Geezer Take: It is very consumer-centric. Brand A's
| management is loudly signaling that Things Have Changed, at
| what _was_ a familiar & perhaps favored company. So I need
| to be alert for price hikes, product shrinks, quality &
| service downgrades, etc., etc. Or, if there is a Brand B that
| I like almost as well - then this is probably a _great_ time
| to switch to it. Unless Brand A 's product was extremely
| fungible & competitive (say, gasoline), then switching to B
| before A's sh*t hits the fan will involve a lot less time &
| grief than sticking around after A has served notice.
| bbarnett wrote:
| The sad part is, I have literally lost brands. Just entirely
| been unsure what I used to buy, because I buy based upon look,
| not just on product name.
|
| EG, I buy battered fish in a blue box, the box disappeared from
| my main grocery store. When I went to my less visited store, it
| was gone there too. Literally, I just picked a random
| replacement brand.
|
| Another thing which gets me, is marketers think everyone buys
| things weekly. And I once noticed a product I was hunting for
| with "New look!" on the box, but if was the last of the "New
| look!" boxes, the ones behind tem were missing the
| pronouncement.
|
| I'm buying fish sticks here, and I do so once every 6 months,
| and throw a bunch of boxes in my deep freeze.
|
| I'm not tied into what "exciting change" some yahoo thinks
| their product is going through, nothing is exciting about the
| food I buy, I just want fish sticks.
|
| The box could remain the same for 100 years, and I'd buy the
| same thing, as long as the taste and quality inside didn't
| diminish.
|
| UI designers ruined Gnome, ruined my fish sticks, ruination
| upon us all due to UI designers.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Hang about, UI designers didn't ruin Gnome... and the changes
| made in Gnome have nothing to do with product packaging and
| logo changes!
| alpaca128 wrote:
| My local grocery store recently redesigned their milk
| packages. Before the change the two variants were white and
| blue respectively. Now they are blue and white. They
| literally switched the colors after (iirc) 15+ years of the
| same consistent colorscheme. I'm still puzzled by that move.
| andrepd wrote:
| > UI designers ruined Gnome, ruined my fish sticks, ruination
| upon us all due to UI designers.
|
| Many modern UI "designers" are certainly not worth of that
| name, in that they change things not according to systematic
| study and observation, but only due to their own hunches and
| personal preferences.
| xorcist wrote:
| Is a designer that bases their designs on numbers, not
| aesthetics or user experience, really designers?
|
| Usability studies have so many confounding variables that
| it's not even funny. It's not hard to pick studies to
| support anything. As if that wasn't enough, they're highly
| contextual and inevitably used in a completely different
| context.
|
| None of the well known great designers of the past century
| relied on A/B studies to do what they did. Granted, they
| likely delivered a lot of duds too, but at least those
| designs could be identified as bad.
|
| Designs with statistics behind them can never be bad
| because the numbers haven't changed, and the numbers was
| what motivated the change in the first place.
| ChrisLTD wrote:
| The thing that separates good UI designers from the bad are
| superior hunches and personal preferences.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > I'd buy the same thing, as long as the taste and quality
| inside didn't diminish
|
| This is too much even. Of course it's better if the taste
| doesn't change. But there is a _huge_ I 've already bought
| this before in my buying patterns. Unless something becomes
| unserviceable I'll probably keep buying it.
| Narkov wrote:
| > The box could remain the same for 100 years, and I'd buy
| the same thing, as long as the taste and quality inside
| didn't diminish.
|
| See this comes down to simple maths though. If you can retain
| enough of the loyal customers and win some news ones with the
| "exciting change", the net difference is worth it.
|
| This keeps happening so I guess the maths checks out.
| chris_wot wrote:
| It's also possibly done because people train themselves to
| like familiar tastes. There might be a small drop in sales,
| but eventually as more customers buy the product they will
| get used to the new flavour.
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| I no longer assume rationality on the part of businesses
| and consider doing so a serious mistake. Businesses often
| have short term thinking and have shown themselves
| perfectly willing to shoot themselves in the foot.
|
| The original comment that started this thread listed a
| bunch of plausible and probable causes of branding changes,
| and all of them are only rational from the point of view of
| an individual and orthogonal at best to the improvement of
| the business they are working for.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Oh, and don't get me started on flavour or product change.
|
| I don't want "new and improved". Stop it! Leave my tasty
| thing alone. The number of times I've changed brands, and
| never gone back, because "improved"...
|
| And the worst, I buy frozen pizza. Unlike my fellow shoppers,
| I buy for the best crust flavour, and only meat.
|
| Why?
|
| Because if you want good frozen pizza, buy great crust, meat
| only, the put fresh veggies on it! Meat freezes well, not so
| much veggies.
|
| Lately, one brand has added "croissant crust" and also
| "cheese in crust", and unless a supermarket is the size of
| all creation, it doesn't have room for _one brand_ with 8
| types, by 3 styles.
|
| The result? The best crust, without extra calories(cheese),
| is now impossible to find.
|
| I had to switch brands.
|
| Just stop it ffs!
| pindab0ter wrote:
| I've always thought a lot of 'improvements' are really cost
| savings while trying to maintain the quality of the product
| or change it a little so it isn't noticed as much; "It's
| better, so if you don't like it that's on you."
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| I'm thinking 'New Coke' here. What a disaster.
| tempest_ wrote:
| "New Look" is usually a synonym for shrinkflation.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| I'm assuming due to the croissant crust reference that
| you're saying the best crust is the digiorno original?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Here, Canada, it's Delissio. It may be the same thing
| though.
|
| For me, out of the brands I can try locally, its crust
| seems best.
| MongooseMan wrote:
| I agree mostly, although as a counter-example, about a year
| ago Nutella released a new "extra cocoa" variant which was
| much tastier, and a bit less unhealthy (lower sugar
| content).
|
| It was so good that I refuse to buy regular Nutella
| anymore, even though the "extra cocoa" edition seems to be
| no longer sold.
| pgt wrote:
| Lisp did this to me for every other programming language.
| ectopod wrote:
| Twiglets - crunchy snacks coated in yeast extract - have
| been ruined. Yeast extract is quite salty so to meet the
| government's new healthy food guidelines the manufacturer
| has removed more than half of it. They are pointless now,
| bland and a bit greasy.
|
| They've been my favourite snack for years. I'm gutted.
| jfk13 wrote:
| You could always make your own:
| https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4whf9o
| lozenge wrote:
| Ingredient prices can vary wildly, even outside of
| inflationary periods. Customers also prefer prices to
| change rarely, so the only option left is to change the
| pack size and/or reformulate. Eg cocoa prices varied from
| 3,300 USD/T to 2,000 USD/T in 18 months. Sugar nearly
| doubled in the last 3 years. A product released at one
| point would not be economical at another.
|
| Of course, if you are not price conscious then you can
| mostly avoid these issues by buying the most expensive of
| everything, but you're talking frozen pizza here...
| thesausageking wrote:
| The most perfect example of this was when Marissa Meyer took
| over as CEO of Yahoo and "rolled up her sleeves" and worked
| with a few designers over a weekend to create a new Yahoo logo.
| It turned out the new logo was the old one, without serifs and
| more rounded and uniform.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If the cost of that redesign was a few people for a weekend,
| that had to be seen as a smashing success. It's the years
| long process to remove serifs that are bonkers.
| yobbo wrote:
| Or it was an instant destruction of value? The old logotype
| was great in many ways. The original "logo" of the web.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Hmm, actually looking it the 1994-1995 in Times Roman
| would still stand up today. The 1995-2013 look rather
| date design language... There might be nostalgia, but
| still. Some times I see point of changing it.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| A mistake made over a weekend is better than years spent
| making the same mistake. Though obviously, not making a
| mistake would be better.
| thayne wrote:
| The cost of replacing everywhere that uses the logo, and
| making sure the new logo works well in all those locations
| is generally orders of magnitude more than coming up with
| the new logo. Especially if, as is often the case, they
| want everything to switch over to the new logo at the same
| time.
| dieselgate wrote:
| It's funny to see new Taco Bells get put in and have the
| branding be totally different than what I remember as a
| kid.
| [deleted]
| april_22 wrote:
| I think Coca-Cola is a funny example here. They have had the
| same logo for over 100 years now, and people identify Coca-
| Cola with that serif logo. It seems like things are working
| great for them financially. So yeah I don't know how
| meaningful changing logos really is.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Ford is arguably another, although they didn't use the logo
| continuously.
| mattkevan wrote:
| Even though it follows the same basic pattern, they've
| redesigned and updated at least once every decade to keep
| it fresh. Latest redesign was in 2016.
|
| https://www.coca-colacompany.com/au/news/trace-
| the-130-year-...
| NonNefarious wrote:
| Desperation to look "fresh," I guess. But often it's a huge
| failure.
|
| Sony changed its logo in the '80s, I believe, and wisely reversed
| their decision not long after:
| https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/logopedia/images/d/de/It%2...
|
| Pioneer, unfortunately, stuck with its shitty redesign:
| https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2c/6f/64/2c6f64d5649f8b553d7b...
| mulmen wrote:
| Sony link is broken. Or maybe the logo was really that bad.
| Izkata wrote:
| Seems like some sort of weird referrer thing. I get some sort
| of placeholder when I first click it, and the same thing when
| I hit refresh. But if I actually go to the address bar and
| re-browse to the same URL, then it loads.
| NonNefarious wrote:
| Ha! Still working for me, but you're not missing much.
| nayuki wrote:
| > "Sans serif invasion" section
|
| It should be noted that many of the old logos were already in
| some sans-serif font: Revolut, Facebook, Microsoft, Airbnb,
| Pinterest, eBay, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Rimowa.
|
| But yes, as the author notes later:
|
| > switched to a bland and very similar version of a sans serif
| font
|
| > All the quirks, peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies of both tech
| and fashion logos were dropped and replaced with a simple sans
| serif font.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It's the "tyranny of the minimalist" in my opinion. And it's not
| just fonts - it's app design, housing and architecture, retail,
| etc. The sterile, uncluttered-to-the-max ethos has simply
| infected all aspects of design, even to the point of obvious
| negative impacts on usability. Not sure if I'd say "Apple started
| it", but they were certainly on the forefront.
|
| I read an article recently (think it was on HN) about how, not
| too long ago, wealth and status was displayed with impossibly
| intricate designs - think the Belle Epoque or Victorian designs.
| Now it's all expanses of black and white. I joke if I see another
| black-and-white "modern farmhouse" go up in my town I may just
| throw up on their driveway.
| yen223 wrote:
| There's something about talking about minimalism on a forum
| that does not even have bolded text.
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| Technically, it does; it's just so inconvenient almost no one
| bothers to use it.
| FerociousTimes wrote:
| Impressive, what's the cheat code exactly?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Abusing Unicode bold characters. (There are generators
| online, of course. I didn't even type out 11 bold
| characters by hand.)
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Now imagine your family insists the inside also has to look
| like a model home. So clean it looks like no one even lives in
| it. Then add young children. Then add rich, child-free friends.
| Then add shows and magazines about redecorating / 'rennovating'
| every six months. FML.
|
| Keeping up with the Joneses sucks.
| jen20 wrote:
| > So clean it looks like no one even lives in it.
|
| This does not seem like a bad standard for a house to me.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Everyone is certainly free to decide what they consider
| reasonable cleanliness. With a family though one must
| either compromise together or demand/comply. And with young
| kids it's unrealistic to maintain a house so clean it
| appears unlived in. Unless one can afford servants or
| someone in the household is willing to take on that work.
|
| Aesthetically some of us also prefer a home filled with
| trinkets and projects, and even with ornate embellishments
| in the house itself.
| tesseract wrote:
| Pulling off minimalist design _well_ in the physical realm is
| surprisingly difficult and expensive and fragile and can be at
| least as demanding a display of wealth and craftsmanship as
| more intricate styles. If your materials aren 't top quality...
| you can't just hide them with paint or ornamentation. If your
| smooth blank white walls aren't perfectly flat or if your
| product enclosure has some seams that aren't perfectly even or
| that sleek stainless steel street furniture gets a dent... it
| will be noticeable. If you need to use a screw or bolt... you
| can't disguise it with a rosette or something. That floating
| bathroom sink... needs special care taken to keep the plumbing
| parts underneath it hidden or looking presentable. The
| featureless glass cube... is a structural engineering and HVAC
| nightmare.
| sudafedmetoo wrote:
| I think film and television has had an effect on people's
| aesthetics, especially in the home. Set design is cheaper when
| there's nothing in the house, nothing ornate. Large, spacious
| and uncluttered makes for an easier shoot to fit all the people
| in. Uncluttered also means each shoot of the same scene is
| consistent, and ensures the eye is focusing on the action
| rather than unimportant details.
| mastax wrote:
| Probably this article:
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria
| larsrc wrote:
| Even worse is the trend of what I call "lazy logos". Take the
| name and do a typographical tweak to one letter. Upside-down,
| different colour, italics, whatever. One slightly different
| letter and bam! It's a logo. Boooring!
| Izkata wrote:
| > Brands are more than logos now
|
| > People at the head of these powerful brands know that they are
| not defined by their logo anymore but by the product or service
| they provide.
|
| This applies more to the fashion side than the tech side, but I'd
| like to provide an additional counterpoint here: If I didn't
| already know about the redesign and just saw these new ones in a
| store, I'd assume it was some sort of low-quality knockoff.
| pcurve wrote:
| You know what's hilarious?
|
| Coca Cola went in opposite direction. lol.
|
| https://logos-world.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Coca-Cola...
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| This doesn't include new Coke:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke#/media/File:New_Coke_...
|
| You can still see a similar typeface on Diet Coke:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_Coke#/media/File:Diet-Cok...
| barrysteve wrote:
| That one guy in 1887 nailed it.
| userbinator wrote:
| In contrast, its competitor Pepsi went all over the place:
|
| https://logos-world.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Pepsi-Log...
| petepete wrote:
| Thankfully Pepsi reined it in, they were on the verge of
| creating a whole new Pepsi Universe.
|
| https://archive.org/details/pepsi-arnell-021109
| projektfu wrote:
| If you handed that to me before the Pepsi logo were
| released I would have assumed it was parody.
| pcurve wrote:
| Oh believe me, it got panned in the industry for its
| absurdity.
| TillE wrote:
| I never noticed that they'd replaced their distinctive red-
| white-blue logo (1950-2008) with something that looks more
| like a basketball than anything else.
| enlyth wrote:
| Someone posted this years ago and I've never been able to
| unsee it: https://ogden_images.s3.amazonaws.com/www.utne.com/
| images/20...
| d--b wrote:
| Re: fashion.
|
| This is wildly speculative, but it could be that the luxury
| fashion industry has broadened its consumer base significantly in
| Asia. And Asian consumers aren't all that comfortable with
| cursive or serif fonts?
| ekam wrote:
| Why on earth would asians be uncomfortable with cursive or
| serif fonts?
| Ekaros wrote:
| And why should Asia be considered anyway unified in this?
| Take Korean and Chinese and see that they have entirely
| different typography, even Japanese Katakana is still
| separate...
| alexashka wrote:
| Because fashion and what looks good is when everyone does the
| same thing, but _slightly_ differently.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| the point about being readable on mobile or having icons that
| work at smaller sizes is I think one of the more important
| reasons.
|
| Personally though I really like the simplified and black/white
| style. It's clean and functional and it also seems less stressful
| in age where you're bombarded with logos and brands on every
| corner.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Revolut, Facebook, and Pinterest's new logos look "wrong" to me.
| The old ones look more natural and recognisable.
|
| The others from the tech group all look like natural evolutions
| of the logos. But perhaps it's just that they changed long ago so
| there's been plenty of time to get used to the new ones?
| voldacar wrote:
| Some of those fashion brand logos are really surprisingly awful.
| The Burberry and YSL ones in particular are just unforgivably
| tasteless and bland.
| [deleted]
| nickjj wrote:
| I remember a phase where a lot of tech companies tried to copy
| Amazon's smiling arrow into their existing brand's image.
|
| There was a time where DigitalOcean had a little smile line under
| a cloud on their home page years ago but they've removed it since
| then.
| taspeotis wrote:
| https://youtu.be/31PtYw7WeLU
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The new GAP logo should be kem.
| shanghaikid wrote:
| LOL
| davidgerard wrote:
| Missing from this article: contacting any of the brands and
| designers and asking "why?" The "why" bit is entirely
| speculation.
| underwater wrote:
| The article is confused about the difference between a logo and a
| word mark, which is what they are showing. Big brands are super
| pedantic about how and where logo marks and word marks are used.
| You shouldn't be seeing these word marks in contexts that are not
| already dripping in branding for the company.
|
| Look at the Pinterest Brand guidelines
| (https://business.pinterest.com/en-au/brand-guidelines/) and you
| well find them saying: "Only use the Pinterest badge (please
| don't use our word mark)". The Pinterest badge is the exact same
| stylised letter P from the old wordmark. So, almost everywhere
| you encounter a Pinterest logo it will be the stylised graphic.
| They can do that because enough people recognise the brand that
| they can drop the "interest".
|
| The Facebook logo is an even weirder example because they are
| comparing the old Facebook app word mark with the newer Facebook-
| the-company word mark. That logo was _specifically designed_ to
| look different from the app. Now that Facebook is now Meta, that
| uppercase logo has been retired.
|
| Microsoft, Facebook, Pinterest, Spotify and Airbnb all have
| stylised logo marks. eBay and Google use word marks, but are
| brightly coloured and immediately recognisable 99% of the time
| they are seen.
| modernerd wrote:
| I mocked up a comparison of the full logos:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/v5yKD3o
|
| They do retain more personality than when they're stripped down
| to their word marks, even if they still converge around a
| similar visual theme.
| Closi wrote:
| 100% agree - It's not entirely suprising that when you remove
| the logos from a logo, along with initially the colour, they
| look similar.
|
| I bet that those fashion companies have a decent idea of what
| they are doing in terms of branding and design though, and are
| making these decisions consciously and intentionally.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mrxd wrote:
| Also in the age of social media, visual identity is less about
| the wordmark. For most of these companies, their word mark
| doesn't even show up on their social media feeds. Most have
| guidelines that often include a custom typeface, specific types
| of photography, editorial layouts, illustrations that define
| the brand.
| albert_e wrote:
| Is it just me or half the examples listed under "Sans Serif
| Invasion" have even the old logo in a Sans Serif font?
| sktrdie wrote:
| Doesn't this mainly have to do with capitalism and a sort of
| "tragedy of the commons"? Why do supermarkets look so dull,
| boring and not at all aesthetically pleasing? Because they're
| super optimized for selling to the majority of customers. And for
| the majority of costumers probably aesthetics is not that
| important.
|
| I find this very clear also in European architecture of the
| ~1600. Some of the buildings all over Italy, Germany and England
| are these gorgeous pieces of art that would probably never have
| been built if the formula was "optimize the hell out of this so
| we can make short term profit".
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| Weird someone else made the exact same thread on this topic.
|
| https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1545819896004624384
|
| Same exact image used too.
| stncls wrote:
| They mention the OP in passing at the very end of the thread
| (OP is dated November 18, 2020 [1]; tweet is from July 9,
| 2022). Indeed, down in that thread, they even include an image
| from OP with attribution cropped!
|
| Btw, the first image in the thread is also a very widely shared
| image on Twitter with no attribution. Earliest I found in a
| quick reverse image search is from Dec 13 2018 [2], but I doubt
| it's the original.
|
| [1] bottom of page: https://velvetshark.com/articles
|
| [2]
| https://mobile.twitter.com/hakkocaturk/status/10731922448895...
| sabon wrote:
| Author of the article here.
|
| There are many, MANY versions of images from my article on
| Twitter, with attribution cropped. I wanted to have a subtle
| and small contribution and to not be obnoxious. It seems that
| it's not a good idea. Too easy to crop, post as your own and
| sound smart.
|
| It's even worse on LinkedIn. There were multiple posts with
| cropped images, literally tens of thousands of likes, and zero
| attribution, then not even addressing direct comments and
| calling them out.
|
| David Perell used one of the cropped images but he didn't know
| the source. When I commented on it, he added the article to his
| Twitter thread, with proper attribution.
| frittata wrote:
| As a company grows, its branding evolves from the founders
| managing it themselves to eventually being overseen by an
| excessively large team of marketers. These marketers need
| something to do. An obvious project from them to undertake is a
| "rebrand". The marketers' goal is not creativity or innovation,
| its safety. So they look around and do whatever everyone else is
| doing, with maybe a few small adjustments. This guarantees they
| have something to occupy their time for 6-18 months, justifying
| their role in the company in case someone asks what they've been
| up to lately.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Would have been interesting to include Slack as it is just a logo
| (no typeface) going from a very distinctive logo to a generic one
| (at first I thought I had a python script running as it is
| similar to that)
|
| The good news for indie hackers is that temporary logo that is
| just your name in a san serif font ... is probably good enough!
|
| I wonder when Lobster will come back in fashion?
| modernerd wrote:
| These are just the word marks, not the full logos.
|
| I mocked up a comparison of the logos
| (Microsoft/Airbnb/Spotify/Pinterest rarely use their word marks
| without the accompanying icon) and they start to retain a
| _little_ more personality, at least for the tech comparison.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/v5yKD3o
|
| It still seems fair to say they're more bland than past
| iterations, though. The theme is "[optional icon] + sans serif
| word mark", and it's a good example of "small m minimalism" -- a
| kind of unthinking collective march toward an absence of detail
| -- touched on by The Cultural Tutor in this thread:
|
| https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1538211892707086338
|
| > Perhaps minimalist design is so prevalent because we no longer
| have anything to say.
|
| > You don't need me to explain what the Gothic cathedral says,
| for example.
|
| > But the skyscraper? It doesn't say anything, really. It's
| just... _there_.
|
| > And suddenly everything, everywhere starts to look the same.
|
| > Absolute neutrality. No detail. No identity.
|
| > What does that say about us?
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| Architecture is a wierd one to pick on because it has function
| and form.
|
| For instance, the gothic cathedral doesn't actually need those
| two giant pillars out front, it is held up by it's cantilever.
| So we removed those.
|
| Also... Anyone else think it's very dark in here? How about we
| change out the engraved walls for windows?
|
| All this thick concrete and engravments don't allow us to build
| bigger than 8 stories. How about we change it out to a steel
| internal design and add more windows. It will allow more light,
| decrease weight and allow us to build higher.
|
| > Absolute neutrality. No detail. No identity.
|
| > What does that say about us?
|
| I disagree entirely with the basis of your argument. The amount
| of art in TV, Movies, Video games and overall graphic design
| has been on an incredible trajectory.
|
| What happened is that we started to understand our goals and
| mission. Adding two $400k gothic style pillars to the facade of
| a building that do absolutely nothing for thee structural
| soundness, or spend that 400k to add a bit more elegance to the
| rooms?
|
| pretentious and ostentatious or functional?
| modernerd wrote:
| You're right that there are still thousands of examples of
| objects with identity and personality in all forms of modern
| art and design.
|
| You're also right that modern design and architecture are
| shaped by changing missions, goals and standards (as well as
| changing fashions, material science, economic concerns, and
| maintenance and energy considerations since the 16th
| Century).
|
| I don't think that was the twitter author's point, though. (I
| was quoting the author in the parent -- it wasn't "my
| argument".) They didn't say, "we should over-engineer
| structures even though material science has improved to the
| point that we no longer need to" or, "we should embellish
| things excessively even if the budget might be better
| allocated elsewhere". They simply claimed that detail is
| linked to identity and personality; when there is less
| diverse detail in modern design there will be less diverse
| identity and personality.
|
| This seems fair to me and it's easy to corroborate. Popular
| logos have converged around inoffensive icon + sans-serif
| font. New buildings are typically homogeneous unadorned
| concrete/steel boxes or glass towers or some mix of both.
| Popular hardware has converged toward a minimal glass slab.
| Sales websites feel like cookie-cutter versions of each
| other. These objects can all still be beautiful, but they can
| also lack personality.
|
| The subtext in the author's thread was that it doesn't need
| to be this way. It is possible to meet modern goals and
| standards and also design to a budget, but be braver (the
| active, big-M Minimalism rather than the more cowardly
| small-m version). You can build "minimal" things that have
| details, identities and personalities. For example, Teenage
| Engineering[1] and Zaha Hadid's architectural firm[2] both
| inject their designs with detail and personality while
| following a minimalist/modernist style. This elevates them
| from the glass slab/box world of some of their peers, and it
| makes the products and environments more interesting to use
| and live in.
|
| [1]: https://teenage.engineering/
|
| [2]: https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/top-
| architects/a295-30-...
| ricardobeat wrote:
| A square box of concrete can be functional.
|
| I don't think that trade-off is real - can't think of a
| single classical, beautiful building I've been to where the
| interior would benefit that much from a flat glass facade. In
| fact what comes to mind is Penn Station as a counter-example.
| Do you have any examples?
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| my point was alot of the 'Design' of Gothic came from it's
| requirements, not percieved beauty. They put those giant
| pillars and facade up to hold the building up. They were a
| very expensive way of building.
|
| Now with modern technology like cantilevers, these 'Gothic
| Buildings' don't actually require those giant pillars of
| rock and are there purely for nestolgic purposes. Highly
| expensive nestolgic purposes.
|
| & obviously me and you have been looking at different
| skyscrapers. I live in chicago and I think they are all
| absolutely stunning & unique.
|
| >I don't think that trade-off is real - can't think of a
| single classical, beautiful building I've been to where the
| interior has been downgraded because of the facade. Do you
| have any examples?
|
| Obviously they had a budget on the building. The more you
| spend on non-functional, artistic requirements the less you
| have for functional.
|
| The whole principle of modern architecture literally bases
| itself around how awful gothic buildings are for this very
| reason. Functional, unpretensious designs that let in alot
| of light.
| notahacker wrote:
| Also, the carved ornamental bits of classical and
| medieval architecture were mostly designed based on very
| different aesthetic sensibilities to our appreciation of
| how the stone looks after the centuries have worn the
| paint off...
|
| We'd probably consider the original Greek temple
| decoration in its original state as looking a bit gaudy,
| and they'd probably consider the undressed stone or white
| paint of neoclassical architecture of the last couple of
| centuries to look unfinished.
| languageserver wrote:
| > But the skyscraper? It doesn't say anything, really. It's
| just... there.
|
| > And suddenly everything, everywhere starts to look the same.
|
| these are nationalist dog whistles....
| [deleted]
| diordiderot wrote:
| Yes, those Nazis really hate _ _squints_ _ everything looking
| the same?
| yesco wrote:
| How so?
| stemlord wrote:
| At least in the US, contemporary design culture (or at
| least cherry picked, extreme examples of it) is weaponized
| by the far right as a way of leveraging traditionalism as
| ideal and progressivism, secularism as nihilistic and
| degenerative.
|
| It's also a convenient way to say "cities = bad, country =
| good" which is convenient because minority groups
| historically congregate in cities and the countryside is
| predominately white.
|
| Really the problem is rooted in late neoliberal capitalism
| not our bipartisan politics
| [deleted]
| altdataseller wrote:
| Pinterest and Target look too much alike.
| ekianjo wrote:
| What a botched job they did on Yves Saint Laurent logo. Truly
| amazing.
| pcurve wrote:
| Personally, I think it is actually the best transformation
| among the fashion brand logos, because it also had practical
| benefit of simplifying its name to something more approachable
| and easier to pronounce. "Eave-sonlawrung." didn't exactly roll
| off your tongue ;-)
|
| I have a soft spot for the original logo, but at 50 years old,
| it had a good run compared to most brand logo.
| throwaway744678 wrote:
| They dropped the easiest part (for English speakers): "eve"
| dagmx wrote:
| Only if you know that's what it's meant to sound like
| already. Yves is not intuitively spoken as eve (which is
| also incorrect but besides the point) by someone who is not
| familiar with French
| davidivadavid wrote:
| No word is "intuitively spoken."
| jen20 wrote:
| I've heard several people pronounce it as "wives" while
| walking around the high rent shopping district that
| recently popped up near my house.
| otherme123 wrote:
| Imho luxury brands should never change their logos. Ferrari
| is virtually unchanged since 1947, Porsche is still using
| exactly the same since 1963. Dom Perignom has never touched a
| pixel in their logo since their begginings in 1921, same as
| Dior since 1948. Sadly Moet-Chandon changed their perfectly
| valid logo created in 1743 in 2006, but at least they didn't
| botch it with sans and minimalism.
|
| Then you have some back-to-beggining like Harley Davidson,
| which I'm sure YSL would do at some point in the future.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Ferrari is virtually unchanged since 1947, Porsche is
| still using exactly the same since 1963. Dom Perignom has
| never touched a pixel in their logo since their begginings
| in 1921, same as Dior since 1948.
|
| Porsche didn't update their font (or really not much if
| they did) but they did update the Porsche crest a few times
| (the one they slap on the hood / rims / keychains /
| headrest / etc.) though, but to make it better: at every
| change they actually made the "Porsche" letters on the
| crest be closer to the original Porsche font (font which
| was incredibly modern for the time when it came out: I've
| got a leaflet from a Porsche 356 from 1955 or so and the
| font hasn't aged at all).
| etempleton wrote:
| It is a trend in a trend based space and also for practical
| reasons--a lot of old logos do not scale particularly well to a
| tiny profile picture.
|
| I mostly hate this trend, but it is in part a response to the
| overly playful logos. Look at the trend towards and away from
| skewmorphism in UX. Very similar here.
| ravenstine wrote:
| We're in an economic era that mostly selects for safety. What's
| more safe than a plain sans-serif font? Business owners and
| C-level execs will believe they won't have to worry that a logo
| may be turning off a demographic because they think that plain
| letters will turn away no one or appeal to most.
|
| The day there's a serious economic downturn forcing the losers to
| close their doors, I would bet the newcomers will have more
| interesting logos.
|
| As an aside, there's a certain attitude among designer-types on
| imposing agreed upon "standards" designed to be ultra-inclusive
| and inoffensive. This is not only a cause for why so many logos
| have become minimalist, but why so many business websites are
| using nearly identical illustrations of abstract looking
| humanoids with atypical skin colors (look up "Alegria" design).
| It's global-homogenization driven by the politics in vogue.
|
| Related reading:
|
| "Here's why Alegria is taking over tech world interfaces."
|
| https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/dont-worry-these-gangley-armed-...
|
| "CalArts Style And What You Need to Know About It"
|
| https://blog.displate.com/calarts-style/
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Flat Design / Material Design.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Eli Schiff covered this in great detail with a 3 part series,
| which unfortunately is no longer fully available, but there is an
| archived version here -
| https://web.archive.org/web/20170513053653/http://www.elisch...
|
| It's definitely worth a read if you're interested in a better
| overview of this phenomenon.
| akamaka wrote:
| What this article misses is how most of these old designs are
| also unoriginal, using typefaces that were overused:
|
| - 1700s-style hairline serif fonts for fashion brands, attempting
| to give an aura of being an old established fashion house
|
| - Fonts with a playful, often outlined style for Web 2.0 era
| companies, emphasizing the human element of users being
| contributors
| jaimex2 wrote:
| Basically Apple is to blame for the bland samish-eveywhere
| Internet we have today.
|
| No Flash
|
| No Fonts
|
| No Multi-tasking
|
| No Widescreen
|
| No Uniqueness.
|
| Think Diffrent indeed.
| jen20 wrote:
| > No Widescreen
|
| What are you talking about? To a good first approximation,
| every laptop computer or phone you can buy today has a 16:9 or
| 16:10 aspect ratio screen (much to my annoyance).
|
| The fact that people don't use it is because wide designs are
| hard to read. This is an established fact in print, for
| example, which is why newspapers use columns, and why properly
| typeset books have around 80 characters per line.
|
| > No Fonts
|
| WTF? Almost every page I visit wants to download tens of
| megabytes of web fonts, none of which I permit.
|
| > No Multi-tasking
|
| I can't even work out what you mean by this. I'm replying on a
| iPhone with a Picture in Picture video playing in the top
| corner, and just received a notification. I'd love to know what
| your definition of multi-tasking is, frankly, because it has
| zero basis in operating system reality.
| pizzathyme wrote:
| Counter example: Meta's new logo. It's an elegant infinity symbol
| + M + VR goggle shape
| layer8 wrote:
| Maybe the Overton window of logo fonts is somehow shrinking, and
| the brands want to avoid appearing too offbeat.
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