[nichols]

This article reads like a parody at times.

Clearly the designers who designed the ugly logo aren't the problem, it's "everyone else." (He actually says this.) Everyone else is "not qualified" to offer an opinion-- no, not even if they are professional designers. Clearly only the people inside the organization that did the design are qualified to have an opinion. People who criticize are "reactionaries" (LOL, comrade). Above all designers should never "criticize" other designers no matter how bad their shit smells.

One has to wonder which profession he feels he is in-- manure shoveler? or perhaps bootlick. Either way, this essay made me laugh like none other. I think the only appropriate response is U MAD?

[smsm42]

I don't really get this "you are not qualified to have an opinion about this" thing. I'd understand if we talked about some specialized form of art that was designed to be appreciated by a narrow circle of truly illuminated people and to heck with the rest of the boorish crowds. But we're talking about identity that will be demonstrated day to day to millions of people and is supposed to attract them and they are supposed to like it and get some ideas from it, presumably. Who else is to judge if it attracts them or not but those same people it is supposed to attract? If the idea they get is "we hate you" - how it is anything but bad? No, I can understand the feeling of people that were sure their design was cool and were disappointed. But if this product is meant for mass consumption - in form of being part of public materials, etc. - then I think if the public hates it it should be back to the drawing board.

[colmvp]

But he's actually right.

Do you realize how many people hated the Pepsi logo when it was re-designed? Now look at it versus the old logo years after we've become accustomed to it: the old logo absolutely looks like it's a stodgy 80s design. And that was the point of the logo redesign: to make it feel dynamic and modern.

I'd even be surprised of 90% of people polled in the early 80s would've said it made sense for a tech company to a) use a fruit as their logo and b) have it placed on computer equipment.

People often gravitate towards what they are comfortable and familiar with. That's why I try to not evaluate everything by my gut until I see the full picture and rationale.

I didn't love the logo but I thought the identity system was very strong and vastly aesthetically cooler than the majority of shitty academic identity systems I'm familiar with in North America where no one tries ANYTHING different. One could toss a few dozen university logos together from Canada and the United States and they'd probably just mesh into one blob.

[Camillo]

As far as I recall, people didn't hate the new Pepsi logo, they just found the leaked design document ridiculous. But if you read it today...

http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/20090521-firefoxIco...

...yep, still ridiculous.

[jlgreco]

This logo doesn't look unfamiliar. It looks too familiar. It looks like something that belongs on a powerpoint presentation in the 90s.

[bcoates]

The second thing I thought after "loading..." was that it's a cross between the 80s United artists logo and the ugly two-color late 60s MGM lion:

it looks dated but not so dated as to be classy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UnitedArtistsLogo1980s.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MGM_logo_used_in_the_movie...

[colmvp]

Hardly.

Fact is most people expect certain visuals from academia.

[jlgreco]

It hardly looks like that to me? I beg to differ, it most certainly looks like that to me.

Do you expect me to pretend that I don't think that just because I am not a designer?

[snogglethorpe]

Hmm, in my experience this is actually a depressingly common game that universities play:

(1) Pay design firm mucho bucks to "redesign identity." [The fee is usually insanely huge, especially considering the quality of the result and the probable amount of effort that went into it.]

(2) Get truly horrible result back, which is universally hated by everybody except the design firm. [Well, who knows what they actually think behind closed doors, but in public, they have total confidence in the thing they're getting paid a huge fee for.]

(3) Spend huge amounts of time and money trying to force people to use it, usually resulting in people hating the new "identity" even more. Often this involves draconian regulations that absolutely forbid any use of the old logo in any context whatsoever (amusing when talking about history of course...), and creation of new infrastructure solely for brand-identity enforcement (and remember, this is a university we're talking about here...).

(4) Either (a) eventually give up and go back to the old logo, (b) successfully browbeat everybody into going along with the new order until all the people that remember the old logo have died, or (c) officially maintain the new logo while in practice everything except the school letterhead just quietly uses the old logo anyway. [Which of these happens depends on university politics.]

I've personally been associated with two universities that have gone through exactly this idiotic process, and have heard of others second-hand.

In most cases the whole thing seems to be a sort of an ego project for the university administration, who think it's a chance to "refresh things." Once the design firm gets started with the vague hand waving and justifications, the administration almost always seems to be gullible--and egotistical--enough to accept pretty much anything they say at face value. Even once it becomes clear that it's a complete cock-up, backing down would be an admission of failure, and there's no way the administration is gonna do that unless there are mass protests and burning of faculty.

Commercial firms sometimes do similar things, but are generally a bit less gullible AFAICS, I guess because they tend to be a bit more hard-headed (university administrations are often, well, kinda...wooly...).

[dredmorbius]

I thought (and am still inclined to think) that the logo belongs to an airline, not a soft drink.

Then again, I don't drink soda and don't watch television.

I seem to recall street advertising of the new Pepsi logo around 2008 and was utterly baffled by it for months.

[aes256]

I'm inclined to agree with the author.

There are a few parallels here with the logo for the London 2012 Olympics. When the brand was announced in 2007, it was slated.

80% of the public gave it the lowest possible rating, people were outraged about the cost, newspapers ran competitions for their readers to create their own logos, and an animated version of the logo was reported to cause epileptic seizures.

The officials in charge stuck to their guns, and five years down the line I think it's fair to say the branding was a huge success. High impact, instantly memorable, and yet hugely versatile.

As the author of this article points out, the logo was just a small part of a much larger branding strategy.