> <i>"A logo is really a visual manifestation of all the complex ideas, values and people that fuel a company"</i><p>You lost me here.<p>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 <i>does</i> say "IBM", literally.<p>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?<p>How do concentric red circles describe "bargain department store"? How does a strange six-pointed star describe "Wal-Mart", or any of <i>its</i> 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?<p>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).<p>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.
Quoting from TFA:<p><pre><code> This is the kind of nonsense that results from
fundamentally misunderstanding what a logo is.
</code></pre>
Rephrasing:<p><pre><code> 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].
</code></pre>
After looking at some of the logos, it was very clear that Yahoo was playing around and not seriously testing logos...
This "church of design" approach to criticism is intense. The idea that you can't violate the sanctity of a logo by playing with it is refuted every day by Google and their doodles.
> This “face-off chart” in particular has all the charm of pulling out a spreadsheet on a date.<p>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".
This seems to be a re-occurring misunderstanding. The 30 logos are not candidates. They are not potential logos. They are "our way of having some fun while honoring the legacy of our present logo" [1] and were used to get people used to the idea of change. There were horrible logos in there - pretty sure the people making them even knew that. The new logo, as it will be revealed tonight at midnight EST, will be the actual logo - everything else was tongue in cheek. It has people talking about Yahoo. It has people wondering what the actual new logo will be.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/57582020969/kicking-off-30-days-of-change" rel="nofollow">http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/57582020969/kicking-off-30-days...</a>
I don't know why design snobbery grates on me so much but it does. Take for example Coca Cola. They have been around for 100+ years and their logo has evolved over that time [1]. Did anyone care? NO. Did they care when they changed the actual product (New Coke). YES. [2]<p>First off, this is Yahoo! and I'm sure most rockstar designers are <i>too cool</i> to work at/for them anyway.<p>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).<p>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).<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/125/history-of-coca-cola-logo.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/125/history-of-coca-cola-logo.htm...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke</a>
As others have pointed out, this is not really an experiment for Yahoo to figure out which logo works best. It is just an attempt to shake things up, trying to appeal to the modern internet users. You can perhaps see this more in the line of kinda-Google-doodle-but-not-really
Companies redesign logos all the time and it's highly doubtful all of them have endless angst over representing the gestalt of their company values to their customers with it. This piece reeks of self-important design student.
I am thoroughly convinced that Yahoo! is purposefully putting out 30 crappy logos so that the stunning one they've spent considerable time and money on and that they're releasing tomorrow will just seem that much better.
Put the logo dispute aside, any great products from Yahoo delivered recently?<p>All I see is good & old ones get closed.<p>Heck, Yahoo China simply decided to close all together.<p><a href="http://cn.yahoo.com" rel="nofollow">http://cn.yahoo.com</a>