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.
Google and their doodles are part of their identity. The fact that it changes, and the way it changes affects people's perception of who google is, and their fundamental philosophy and approach to things. This idea of a changing logo was pioneered by Frank Olinsky and his MTV identity work. The change is part of the logo, not a search for a new/better one.
On the other hand, "not violating the sanctity of a logo" says something else about a company. Something a company may desire. Dependability. Stability. Reliability. (but also potentially dated, old fashioned, stagnated)
Neither of these things has much relevance to the point of the article. The point of the article is something like this:
Imagine you go on a date, and during the course of the date you try on 30 different personalities, and at the end you ask the girl (or guy) to take a survey on which personality she (or he) liked best- In order to determine what kind of personality you should have.
Wouldn't you think that would come off kind of fake? Who you are, or who you should be, how you should dress, the way you talk, this is not something you can get out of a survey of what people think of you while you adopt a range of different reinventions of yourself.
But Yahoo never took a survey to see what people liked. Someone else took a survey. This is more like you declared a
"silly hat month" and wore 30 different silly hats to work each day and someone at another office took a poll to see which one people liked best.
Right, but if Google had played with their logo for 30 days, and then stopped, would it really be any different from if they'd never played with their logo ever?
Well, I'm only commenting on what I think the point of the article is. On the other hand, that point is undermined by comments in this thread about what the actual intent was. If the intent was just to be playful, (like say, the episode of Doctor Who in which the Time Lady Romana tries on different "bodies" before settling on a new actress to play her) then that's not at all like the scenario I described. It's more like dying your hair a different color each day on a bet.
However, to some people, (the author specifically) it's /come off/ as the situation described. So, without really seeing more evidence, I can tentatively conclude "a swing and a miss". But I can't fault them for trying.
On the other hand, "not violating the sanctity of a logo" says something else about a company. Something a company may desire. Dependability. Stability. Reliability. (but also potentially dated, old fashioned, stagnated)
Neither of these things has much relevance to the point of the article. The point of the article is something like this:
Imagine you go on a date, and during the course of the date you try on 30 different personalities, and at the end you ask the girl (or guy) to take a survey on which personality she (or he) liked best- In order to determine what kind of personality you should have.
Wouldn't you think that would come off kind of fake? Who you are, or who you should be, how you should dress, the way you talk, this is not something you can get out of a survey of what people think of you while you adopt a range of different reinventions of yourself.