I completely agree, and I don't understand what, aside from its historical significance, people can point to that suggest it was a good logo. I think it's a little visually complicated, I don't think the colors harmonize, it's not transcendentally simple like the Apple logo or the Nike swish, the choice of font and arrangement of letters isn't doing anything for me. and I'd like to think that I'm the type of person that would be receptive to rationales for why logos are the way they are. Not that I'm an expert, but I followed conversations on flag design, I've read about the Twitter and Pepsi logo redesigns, the Obama icon, etc.
The best rationale that I can think of is that it looks like an artifact of outdated 90s design, but was produced in the 80s, and so was in a sense ahead of its time, which counts for something, at least.
It is a really good logo. I mean, it's up there with CocaCola and Nike, imo. I had always thought it must have been done by a professional, or at least, someone very very talented. It's just a little too perfect.
Seeing the iterations was really interesting. Sometimes you have to go through a few complex versions before realizing that simpler is better.
It's meh in that boring, vague and diluted way that logos too often are. The design already feels dated, like something Adobe would create for their software in the 00s.
Both of the symbols shown in the top image are fine by me, the proposed one perhaps a bit better than the original. The OP's proposal just looks ugly and incredibly outdated. This new logo you linked looks like it's new, speedy, and I like the two-color simplicity.
If I'm thinking of the same post that logo is poorly done / chosen. I know the author wanted very specific imagery in it and achieved that but I don't think that logo would be considered "good" by most.
But your looking at it from the perspective of 2018.
Back then it was a bold and striking logo for a computer company.
As another commenter said, perfect for the late 80's early 90's.
In fact if you look at the London 2012 Olympics logo that too was gaudy but it did its job and the wider marketing materials did a fantastic job of building on it an applying it across everything.
I am not saying the new logo is amazingly unique. I am saying that the cries about the individuality and character of the old logo are overblown. It's a pretty generic coat of arms.
It's a straight up bad design. It's the logo of a massive company, there is no room for emotion or being "bitter". They have a lot of man power, and produced this, it's sub par. It's not pleasing to the eye, it's sharp and 3d-ish. You'd get something better by throwing $500 towards 99 designs.
A logo should look great on a massive banner as well as my tiny retina screen. Right now, when it's smaller, the bevels and shadows/jaggedness of the logo are very off putting, not something I'm pleased to look at.
I think there are valid points against it to make. Interest, uniqueness, memorability all suffer with this new logo. They're throwing away an established brand with a lot of associations for people, but obviously they considered that and deemed it worth it. I think one of the worst things about is that it's already aesthetically dated, and, because it has nothing really unique or interesting or stylistic about it, it won't age well.
But it's not worth a crusade over. I find it interesting how emotionally attached people (myself included) are to brands, sometimes. A bad rebrand (or even a clever, but sufficiently different rebrand) can feel a bit like cutting down a big old tree in your yard. Why are you getting rid of something so old and beautiful? There are some good reasons, but it still hurts.
Yes it is ;-) There was a post on HN some time ago showing how old logos were in many cases so much better than new ones, and Pepsi was amongst them.
But, Google being Google, maybe they tested it? The problem with tests, I think, is that it favors bland versions because they upset the least; this new logo kind of smells of "design by committee", no?
I agree, I'm not suggesting a name change at all. That would be bad. And obviously the idea of the icon being ugly is completely objective, but I just don't like it. Bad colors. Bad shapes. Idk. It looks old, probably because it is. But plenty of old companies have modernized their logos in a pleasant way.
The best rationale that I can think of is that it looks like an artifact of outdated 90s design, but was produced in the 80s, and so was in a sense ahead of its time, which counts for something, at least.
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