
Yahoo showed us 30 days of logos. Here’s the one consumers liked best - awenger
http://survata.com/blog/yahoo-showed-us-30-days-of-logos/
======
seldo
I think the weirdest thing about Yahoo's logo is the color. It wasn't until I
started working for Yahoo that I first heard that the corporate colors were
purple and yellow[1], later changed to purple and white.

The logo on Yahoo.com was -- from birth until around 2008 or so -- red. That
was the color everybody outside of Yahoo knew. But inside the company
everything that could be a color was purple, people were emotionally invested
in it, and debate raged on getting Jerry and Filo (who were apparently the
holdouts on red) to change the home page logo to purple.

It seems to me very emblematic of Yahoo that they chose their corporate color
first entirely at random and then hung on to it forever out of sentimentality.
That's the kind of place Yahoo is: fuzzy and loving but not terribly sensible,
business-wise.

Changing the logo is a cliché for a struggling company that doesn't have a lot
of new ideas. I actually don't think that's true of Marissa Mayer; a whole
bunch of her ideas are along the lines of "do whatever Google did", but then
Google is very successful, and at least part of what Yahoo needs to do is get
better at the things that Google is already good at. But the acquisition-
frenzy in mobile seems smarter, and the acquisition of Tumblr smarter still.
Time will tell whether it's enough to turn the ship around.

But I still think it's weird that the corporate color is purple.

[1] Chosen essentially at random because they were the cheapest paints
available when they painted their first offices. Purple and yellow do not go
together at ALL, incidentally.

~~~
Domenic_S
Purple and yellow do so go together!

[http://www.bhg.com/gardening/design/color/yellow-purple-
flow...](http://www.bhg.com/gardening/design/color/yellow-purple-flower-
combinations/)

~~~
sheri
Also see the Minnesota Vikings and the LSU Tigers colors.

~~~
mitchty
As someone living in minnesota, I don't see how the vikings are a vote for
purple and yellow. :D

------
cschmidt
I think Paul Rand would turn in his grave at the thought of "Thinking of a new
logo? Don’t guess; test." There is a lot more to logo design than having a
first impression test well. I really do hope they hired someone good to do
this.

I guess we'll see the "real" version tomorrow.

Edit: Let me say it another way. If the real logo is just #31 in a series,
then they will have screwed up big time. The buzz about the redesign will just
be "I liked #N better". I'm hoping there is more to the redesign than just an
exploration of the typeface choice. If that's it, they shouldn't have let us
see 30 variations. Paul Rand just used to present his one choice.

------
nostromo
The winner seems very similar to the old logo, sans serifs.

I wonder if the proper conclusion is that this is the best new logo, or that
this is simply the most familiar.

~~~
potatolicious
Perhaps familiarity is in fact part of the _definition_ of the "best "logo.
After all, a logo serves no other purpose than recognition. Companies
routinely spend a great deal of money ensuring that their logo, colors,
interior decor, etc etc, all make people go "Oh yeah! That's [X]!"

~~~
sltkr
> After all, a logo serves no other purpose than recognition.

If recognition was the sole purpose, Yahoo should have kept the logo exactly
the same. I think logos (or styles in general) are also an expression of the
attributes that a company wants consumers to associate with the brand.

The uneven baseline in Yahoo's logo express playfulness, as do the colors in
Google's logo, for example. That's how Google and Yahoo contrast themselves
with boring old business-oriented companies like Microsoft, IBM and SAP.

Like potatolicious pointed out, it is dubious how worthwhile it is to ask your
existing customers for feedback if you want to change your image. After all,
these are people that are already familiar with you, while the purpose of an
updated image is, presumably, to attract a different/wider userbase.

~~~
TylerE
Logos in fact have _two_ purposes: Recognition, and so C-level empty suits can
feel like they're accomplishing something by changing them.

------
erichurkman
The board of logos looks like something you'd expect if you went to 99designs
and posted: "Billion dollar company needs new logo; winner gets $125! Must use
one color, be tiny as hell, wording only, no art. Winner will be selected
after 30 days of voting by end users. Please, no imagination; we do not want
to scare Grandma away from her 'google'."

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Its incredible how we think popularity means correct. The "best" logo via this
methodology is very similar to the current one. Yahoo has this "old" and
"cookiecutter" image that's bad enough. This just makes it worse. I can't
imagine real designers thinking these designs and this popularity contest
mentality is remotely good. Seems like something a ma and pa company would do
because they didn't know better.

Also, try a color other than purple. No one likes purple.

~~~
blah32497
Objectively I think rainbows are worse than purple, but it works for Google.

I think the purple really sets them aside. HN is orange, Reddit is light blue,
Facebook is darker blue, Yahoo is purple. _shrug_

------
chriskelley
It's important to note that this article and survey were written and executed
by Survata, under no guidance from Yahoo, and that the results are not the
"Yahoo sanctioned" winner of all the logos. I think at initial glance this
isn't obvious.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Right. And they only tested 5 logos picked at random from the first 28 that
Yahoo presented. They may not even have picked the "best" 5 out of that lot.
So really... this whole blog post was click bait. I'd never heard of Survata
before... but now I have... for better or worse.

~~~
renata
The way I understand it, each user surveyed got five random logos, but not the
same ones. Over the entire population, all the logos were surveyed and the
"winningest" ones are presented as the highest rank (see the last chart with
the full matrix of which logos won against which others).

~~~
elliottcarlson
This still generates an issue with sample size - since today was the 29th day,
that logo had from days start through time of writing/submitting the article,
while the logo from day 1 had a much larger sample size. There is some
evidence in the results. Secondly, was it fully randomized, or were things
like multi-armed bandit or other a/b testing methods used to provide enough
variation. The chart is biased towards earlier numbers, with the outliers of
the really bad logos being dispersed towards the end.

------
mnicole
As a designer, this whole process is degrading, frustrating and reminiscent of
the worst clients I've had throughout my career. I'm not sure if they are
trying to make it look like they want to appease the people, but if I were
working in-house over there, watching all of these awful designs roll out
would just crush me and make me question what they think my worth is. I'm
hoping the whole thing turns out to be a joke.

~~~
nbuggia
There is possibly more than just design at stake here. It can be a really
difficult technical and cultural problem to get such a large website to the
point where they are capable of changing their site every day - and ostensibly
compare the impact of each change on their metrics.

It can also be difficult for a company so firmly rooted in one brand identity
to make a 'big bold change'. Forcing this type of churn onto the company could
make the organization more comfortable with change, and could lead to an
actual 'big bold change'.

I don't know if any of this will happen, but large organization often have a
lot more to balance than just having one designer come up with what they think
is right.

~~~
toast0
I was at Yahoo! for the last logo change (from web safe red to purple), and
that I was seeing the correct logo every day across the network is pretty
impressive.

------
wahsd
Isn't the "winner" the current crumby logo? I would suspect that beyond any
kind of validity questions from the surveyed cohort that there is a
significant bias built in. Humans are kind of silly that they will always
choose that which is familiar over that which is not, no matter how stupid or
silly the familiar is. People have to heavily be told what they want, because
people also don't like thinking. It is the very core of our society in
particular, but also generally so.

~~~
VladRussian2
>Humans are kind of silly that they will always choose that which is familiar
over that which is not, no matter how stupid or silly the familiar is.

through the human (and well before the human) evolution the ones who prefer
unfamiliar (to try to eat, to touch, to waddle in, to make friends with, ...)
have statistically been leaving lesser number of descendants than ones who
prefer familiar, and thus we're here - the result of that statistical process

> because people also don't like thinking.

instinctive or very well learned/automated behaviour (i.e. familiar
situation/stimuli, trained response) is much cheaper for the brain energy-
wise, thus it will be preferred by selection until the situation changes to
where thinking presents better price/performance ratio. And then new cycle of
bottom-line optimization of pushing newly thought out behaviour in that new
situation down to the level of well trained/instinctive response and back to
square 1.

------
cmarschner
Is it just me, or were none of these logos inspiring in any way? The winner
logo even seems to have a glitch (too much space between "Y" and "A").

~~~
rajivtiru
Here is the complete
list:[http://www.yahoo.com/dailylogo](http://www.yahoo.com/dailylogo)

While I think they were all slightly boring, they were quite varied in design.
I like Day 2.

Also, how is that spacing a glitch? Maybe it is by design? Since the whole
point of this is to play with typeface, letter spacing and other creative
ideas.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I also like the clarity, readability, and simplicity of 18 and 28. Most of the
other options are either hard to read, or just seem like a jumble of shapes at
first glance. But yes, I like the mostly boring options.

------
steven2012
I think a huge problem in today's big-data mentality is that few have the guts
to make a bold decision based simply on good taste. Everything gets over-
analyzed to ad nauseum, much like this ridiculous choice for a new logo. This
process that Yahoo went through for the logo is death by committee x 1000. And
the irony is that people preferred the original logo the best, or didn't care
between the two logos that looked most similar to the original logo.

------
zachrose
This reminds me of Komar and Melamid's Most Wanted Painting series, where they
surveyed[1] residents of various countries to find aesthetic preferences, and
then made the paintings[2] that should appeal and repulse those residents the
most.

[1]
[http://awp.diaart.org/km/surveyresults.html](http://awp.diaart.org/km/surveyresults.html)
[2]
[http://awp.diaart.org/km/painting.html](http://awp.diaart.org/km/painting.html)

------
andrewljohnson
"...for Yahoo’s sake, we hope the new logo announced tomorrow will remind
users of its graphical heritage."

That the logo should "remind" people of the old one seems correct, but too
close to the old one would be a mistake.

These days, it seems like Yahoo management is caring more and more about its
image to non-users. For that purpose, they might be better off keeping some of
the testably preferred characteristics, but taking a sharp right on others to
rewire the brand.

Same great Yahoo, new chocolate filling.

------
anthemcg
Isn't this just subtle confirmation bias? The favorite is basically the old
logo with some things pushed around. Show someone 30 logos , they will
subconsciously like the one that triggers a familiar pattern.

------
metal
I think Peter Griffin said it best. Oh my god, who the hell cares?

~~~
clone1018
Everyone, without even knowing it.

~~~
wmeredith
That's a really good take away for all the people who look down on stuff like
this. EVERYBODY cares; they (you) can't help it. Repetitive manipulative
messaging (think sexy slim people doing sports in beer ads) works even if
you're aware that it's a complete ruse. It persuades your lizard brain and
there's nothing you can do about it. This sort of brainwashing is one of the
most disheartening and insidious things about human nature and, by extension,
the marketing industry.

Don't get me wrong, there's good marketing. There are companies doing amazing
stuff and they can tell you about it honestly with a take-it-or-leave-it
mentality. It's a noisy world and when enough money gets involved (enough is
usually a surprisingly low bar) being honest quickly becomes not good enough.

After spending a couple years in marketing and seeing this kind of research
over and over I had to get out. (I left an online marketing agency to focus on
design and tech.) I think on some level, it's taking advantage of human
weakness. It's in the same ballpark as the studies that show that the placebo
effect still works a little bit even if you TELL THE PARTICIPANTS they're in
the placebo group. WTF, brain? It's so frustrating.

Anyway, You can bet your life that as much aggregate exposure as the Yahoo!
logo gets, that selecting a proven one will impact their bottom line.

It's not a hair worth splitting for your start up with 30 customers, but once
you start dealing with billions of slices of attention, shit gets weird and
unintuitive. See Google's infamous testing of 41 shades of blue
[[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html)]

------
LiweiZ
This is simply the wrong way to do branding. Even it's just for testing logo
design. Come on. I know branding from strategic angle could be very simple to
explain. It's all about how human beings perceive a "thing" and generate
associations. However, executing one part of the branding job like this makes
the test less meaningful. A great brand or whatever thing it is fulfills
people's needs by leading them to a unique journey, not by asking specific
place they want to go. Feedback is very important, but there is other ways to
achieve it better. Moreover, testing is better to be done from a branding's
perspective. Trees and forest are both crucial.

------
eagsalazar2
People's stated preferences may be totally uncorrelated with what Yahoo really
cares about which is how their logo affects people's use of Yahoo properties
vs their competitors.

So while I agree with the statement "test don't guess" wholeheartedly, it
isn't clear that what was tested matters or that the results are actionable.
People often respond to things they would subjectively describe as ugly in
very positive ways wrt key conversions such as signups, sharing, long term
engagement.

~~~
eagsalazar2
In general test behavior, not opinions if you can. People lie to themselves
and pollsters constantly. This is an awesome article about how the Obama
campaign used testing to design their email campaign:

[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/the-
science-...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/the-science-
behind-those-obama-campaign-e-mails)

Big takeaway: you have no idea what is going to work, measure behavior not
opinions.

------
mratzloff
By a large margin, users prefer a slanted exclamation mark, serif font, uneven
baseline, and uppercase letters.

Now, the selected logo was almost identical to the current logo, except with a
sans serif font. But wait... don't users prefer serif fonts?

So wouldn't a truly representative test also measure the logos against the
current logo? Did Yahoo perform this kind of sanity check when trying to
choose a new logo, I wonder?

And as a side note, I just want to say... some of those Yahoo logos are truly
terrible.

------
zpk
They spent 30 days on logos meanwhile butchered their sports site. So many
errors and so many inconsistencies, you can't even look at player game logs
anymore. One page is all in black, while others have the old look(better) in
white.

And the kicker is that they role it out a 2 weeks before fantasy football
starts. You cannot even move to another site in time.

All this time spent on self promotion, and so little spent on execution.

I am a frustrated consumer, and all I get are logos for 30 days....who gives a
blank.

------
andrewfelix
Why employ communications experts and designers if the final decision is left
in the hand of the consumer?

Thankfully this has simply been an exercise in PR. The proof is in that logo.
It's goddamn awful. I imagine it appeals to a nostalgic memory. It's appeal,
much like a bad movie sequel, is base.

Remember a logo is not a brand. So this decision will not have any meaningful
repercussions beyond hype.

------
DigitalSea
What I take from these findings is that people prefer the current style of
Yahoo! logo, so for their sake, the new logo will want to be very similar to
their current one. Obviously Yahoo! were blanket testing what worked best and
presumably have even more detailed statistics about why people liked which
logo.

------
mfrisbie
This seems like it could have been a terrific genetic algorithm experiment in
picking the new logo - create populations of the logo with variation in shape,
font, spacing, and whatever else they could think of. Use ratings as the
fitness function, and iterate.

~~~
twoodfin
I suspect that winning online surveys is not a good fitness function for a
successful logo.

I'm reminded of the spat over the London Olympics logo. Say what you will
about the chosen design, many of the "better" alternatives offered to much
acclaim were completely unsuitable. In particular, I remember one was a
takeoff of the London Underground logo, which, while doubtlessly sure to be
popular in online polls, rather missed the point of creating something
distinctive.

------
city41
Interesting that the most preferred logo was not one of the choices. The logo
in the choices that is closest to the preferred one is different in some key
ways, and a better logo IMO. I wonder which of the two logos users were
actually asked to judge.

------
cenhyperion
Personally I don't think it will look good until they drop the exclamation
mark from their name.

This is a great case study for why design by committee fails and why design
should not be decided by the masses.

------
mbesto
From _The Wire_ -

Stringer Bell changes the name of the product -
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbbZc2pab9k](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbbZc2pab9k)

------
danpalmer
Wait, that logo thing already finished? a) I've been too busy. b) Yahoo need a
better marketing department, I didn't hear about it after day 1.

------
hobs
I now know what it is like to be a complete simpleton in the face of a
courageous nerd rage and be completely baffled why the dude cares.

Interesting gestalt shift.

------
aioprisan
I personally think that they should have published logos in different colors
as well, some of the sans serif fonts looked better in darker colors

------
Arnor
This is what happens when you unleash an intern on
[http://www.dafont.com/](http://www.dafont.com/)

------
famousactress
It's weird to me to assume that the "best" new logo is the one that people
tell you they like the most.

------
ars
Yahoo is overthinking this.

People liked that logo because you can read it easily, and it looks like a
logo not just a word.

~~~
aroman
This article wasn't written by Yahoo!, and to my knowledge the company who did
this study was not commissioned to do so by Yahoo!. So it's not Yahoo!
overthinking anything (yet), it's a company showing off what service(s) they
offer.

------
seeingfurther
YAHOO IS RED!!!! doesn't anyone remember! <old crank sees himself out>

------
blibble
so now you can really tell that Mayer's running the show

------
gametheoretic
This reminds of the famous tea kettle parable.

