September 6, 2013

Logo Opinions

Logos are important. They need to say a lot visually without saying much more than the name.
That is why a good logo is priceless and why people who design them can charge quite a tidy sum if they are any good.

I'm personally not all that good at them yet, but I can tell a good one from a boring one.
Yahoo's new logo is boring.

I do love this article page where they show all kinds of ideas and rehashing of the logo idea. But the new font, from the thin straight lines and the identical nature of the two o's read "bank" or something else equally obsessed with order. Now the fact that the o's are two different sizes seems conflicting with the formality of the font itself. Sure the little tiny scoops at the top of each stroke of the letters is interesting, but it is rapidly lost as the logo is made smaller, to the point where I did not even see them on first glance at the new logo on their search page.

Obviously a lot of thought has go into their logo blueprint. The angle at which the ! is tilted, the exact size difference between the o's, etc. However whereas before I read Yahoo with that same sing song kind of phrase that they used in commercials... YaaahhoooOO000ooo! to now reading it like ya-hoo. Or to use it in a sentence: "That kid in the hoodie over there looks like a real yahoo."

I guess it is not as bad as it could be. Some of them also struck me as for different products. For example Day 2 looks like Yahoo is a feminine product or a yogurt or brand of yoga pants. Day 6 could be a toy manufacturer or something. Day 11 reads "dairy" to me.

My favorites from their list are Day 25 with the hidden smile, Day 23 where it looks like a bit of a funnel like its coming to a point, which is the goal of a search engine... to find the one thing you want, and Day 5, which just feels friendly and relaxed to me without the capitol letters.

Of course everything is subjective and as long as you have pleased the client and gotten paid, at the end of the day, the graphic designer's job is done.

Which one was your favorite?

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