[branchless]

I think these things might make a small difference but overall it's not important.

I view Heineken as a boring lager which has little character, probably due to being produced in industrial quantities. A jaunty 'e' isn't going to fix that.

Same for google. So long as they continue to bang out appropriate search results I'm with them. Right until they don't.

[krapp]

Logo design and typography are intended to affect you subconsciously, not consciously.

That tilted 'e' is meant to advertise the brand in the middle of dozens of other logos in the store, and draw consumers in from that myriad of choices based on psychological cues and associations they may not even be aware of. The effect is important in aggregate - some large number of potential customers conditioned over a lifetime of advertising to associate different typographic styles with emotional states and narratives being slightly more conducive to pick your beer over others than they otherwise might have been, because now it's 'nicer.'

[TheOtherHobbes]

That's what designers tell you anyway.

Objective support for this hypothesis is thin on the ground.

In reality logos are nowhere near the top of the list of factors that drive a buying decision. Whatever bounce effect businesses get from a new logo can usually be explained just as much by novelty as by implied psychological voodoo.

Generally, I'm suspicious of management-by-logo. When I see logos being updated at vast expense for no good reason, I worry about the direction a company is heading in.

[mozumder]

> That's what designers tell you anyway.

And everybody else in the world.

> In reality logos are nowhere near the top of the list of factors that drive a buying decision.

Great. Then replace the Chanel or Louis Vuitton logos with a bright primary colored Google logo, and see what their purse sales are like a year from now. I'm sure millionaire socialite women would love to have their bright red-blue-green-yellow logos on their Saint Laurent jacket (although it would be perfect for Moschino...)

Sorry dude, but you're over thinking this. Logos are part and parcel to brand identity, and everything about branding determines sales.

If you don't have a good logo, you don't have a good business.

[branchless]

This is a false comparison. Logos for clothes sit on the clothes which are themselves judged entirely on their appearance.

Google's search engine has a separate function that stands on it's own two feet irrespective of a change to an 'e'.

> If you don't have a good logo you don't have a good business

Come on my good man, get a grip!

[mozumder]

> This is a false comparison. Logos for clothes sit on the clothes which are themselves judged entirely on their appearance.

Some do. The vast majority of designer clothes don't.

People buy the brand, not the product.

> Google's search engine has a separate function that stands on it's own two feet irrespective of a change to an 'e'.

People bought into the Google brand identity. They were the first to eliminate all the crap around their web search engine, so it would just be a single text box. This made sure people know what Google was - the simple search interface. All of this is part of the brand's visual identity.

Do you think they do an empirical study on this when they first made it?

It is your brand that sells your product.

The shape of the letter 'e' is part of that marketing that sells your product.

In fact, EVERYTHING you do is fundamentally related to sales. You are always closing.

[v0x]

>It is your brand that sells your product.

This is backwards - the product sells the brand. Brands do not just come out of nowhere; people have to like the product first before they can establish loyalty.

[branchless]

Their brand is having a very good search engine. Ever think that the marketing guy is good at persuading you that the marketing guy is the most important thing?

[branchless]

I agree with you. I don't care what google's logo is. AskJeeves had a good logo but their search engine was hopeless.

[justincormack]

askjeeves had a terrible logo

[branchless]

I guess that's what sunk them instead of having:

crappySearch(searchTerm.remove("Jeeves how do I"));