

Yahoo reveals its new logo - MekaiGS
http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/60332693287/introducing-our-new-logo

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cschmidt
It is a better shade of purple. The bevel is kind of gross, and I'm just left
a bit disappointed. A missed opportunity to do something great.

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brettcvz
The bevel bothers me as well, especially dark bevel on white background.

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bloodorange
I just saw it as a new logo. I didn't notice the details (bevel, choice of
colours, etc.) but my first impression when I saw the logo was "Nice!". Maybe
it's mainly targeted at people like me who are not very discerning when it
comes to visual content.

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crazygringo
Forgetting about the ridiculous bevels, they're using what looks to be a
variation of the Optima font, which screams 70's/80's. Unlike other fonts
(e.g. Helvetica), it has not aged well -- it was once a standard corporate
font, now nobody touches it.

Seeing it used in the logo of modern company is, quite frankly, bizarre --
especially a company trying to be "fun", because it is not a "fun" font. It
was corporate/educational.

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anologwintermut
At least it actually reflects what most users think: that they are stuck in
the early 2000's era of bad 3d bevels. It seems so out of place without IE6's
UI adjacent to it.

This is really sad. Yahoo has produced some wonderful looking stuff lately.
Their Android weather app that pulls flickr pictures looks amazing.

Someone blew an opportunity to actually signal that the company had changed
and blew it badly

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kordless
I like it. It would look a wee better if you made the HOO a half a point
bigger.

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balloot
You have to give Yahoo's marketing team credit. If they had just made this
change with no greater context, people would have said "meh" and moved on.

But through some clever marketing techniques the entire internet is abuzz (and
has been for a month) about a minor change in font. Seriously - the change
itself is utterly uninteresting and uninspired. So nice job, Yahoo marketers!

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avenger123
I would say that a minor change in font is a pretty big deal. The symbolism of
the new logo is much more important than the change it self.

It screams of rebirth and new beginnings without completely tearing out the
foundation.

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mwfunk
I guess I'm insane but I actually think it's a big improvement. If changing
their branding goes along with improving their content and actually coming
back from the brink, then people might remember it more fondly than they're
reacting to it now. If there are no other meaningful changes and Yahoo goes
down, then it'll be remembered poorly.

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JacobSkyler
I like it too. The proportions look a lot nicer and so does the colour.

The only grounds I can see for criticising it is that it doesn't follow the
'flat design' aesthetic, but I don't think that's a problem. Plenty of logos
don't.

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untog
Get rid of the 3D depth effect they've put on the letters, and it looks fine.

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Gigablah
I don't understand why they added the bevel, it looks like WordArt :(

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ekianjo
Yeah, it looks pretty bad. I guess it's just a matter of time unless everyone
gets used to it. I think they should spend more time on their services than
their branding, however. Playing with a logo is great, but in terms of value
it's close to zero.

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JEVLON
I avoid literally everything that is owned by Yahoo. This is almost entirely
due to how they present themselves. A bad logo is evidence of a company that
does not care about their products or services. They are finally making steps
to improve their image.

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kordless
> A bad logo is evidence of a company that does not care about their products
> or services.

So all bad logos indicate lack of interest by companies for the things they
are selling? Maybe we can trade stock on that premise!

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JEVLON
Caring != stock value.

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richardjordan
Anticlimax. The down side about a strategy like this is that it's very
unlikely that you'll produce anything OTHER THAN an anticlimactic sense of
meh.

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aroman
Agreed. Though frankly for a company in Yahoo!'s straits, it seems like almost
any press is good press.

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BenoitEssiambre
Use random primary colors for the letters and you are not far from the Google
logo.

EDIT: I gnu image manipulated it:
[http://imgur.com/XajyMr7](http://imgur.com/XajyMr7)

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cperciva
Out of the 30 days of logos, this one looks most similar to day 7 to me --
which according to Survata was the second most popular out of the 30:
[http://survata.com/blog/yahoo-showed-us-30-days-of-
logos/](http://survata.com/blog/yahoo-showed-us-30-days-of-logos/)

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twodayslate
I wonder why they didn't pick the top choice. It looks better to me.

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cperciva
Well, it isn't exactly the same -- the day 7 wasn't 3D and was a heavier
typeface.

But in survata's tests day 7 and day 10 were very close together -- 45% and
47%, compared to 36% or lower for others -- so it would be entirely possible
for yahoo to have tested all 30 and had those two rank oppositely.

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ffk
For comparison, Google's logo also has a bevel and the first letter englarged
extending below the baseline.

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Rumudiez
I don't believe that it's enlarged, rather most lower curves aside from Os
cross the baseline, especially capital letters, in most typefaces.

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40
My first reaction is I don't like it.

It looks dated. The bevel looks like Word Art or something I would have
thought was cool when I first started playing around with Photoshop.

Its too complex. I was expecting them to embrace the current trend of
flatness, and simplicity is a timeless aesthetic. The cutaways from the tops
of the lines add to the complexity along with the many different angles,
letter heights, and "O" bowl-size.

It is similar to the Google logo with the bevel, rather than say Apple or
Microsoft. Considering Marissa's work on the Google homepage, the familiarity
with the Google logo might have made her more confident in this variation.

Losing that distinctive "Y"

I prefer the old logo.

I can see it growing on me though. I would remove the bevel and the caps on
the "YAH" letters.

If it were me I probably would have tweaked the original logo and made the
font look more mature and symmetrical.

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Zaheer
The bevel only makes it look even more antiquated. At a moment like this you
would think they would go for a 'fresher' look.

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plainOldText
No offense, but it looks like shit! The letters are too thin and don't have
beautiful proportions.

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packetslave
Ever notice how, when someone starts a sentence with "no offense, but...", the
very next thing they say/write tends to be really offensive?

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crazypyro
I call it the "No offense, but fuck you."

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redler
It's easy to be reductive and pick apart other people's work. Time may prove
this to be an iconic choice. But it does look a bit like the logos designed in
the early 2000s using the Optima font and a Fireworks bevel filter, high video
production values notwithstanding. It's not made that way, of course, but
Googling for logos using Optima yields vast fields of results with a strong
family resemblance.

Tangentially, it's amusing that businesses named "Optima" often choose that
eponymous font. Even American Express did this with the Optima line of credit
cards.

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sirmarksalot
It makes me want to go look at something else. It screams, "You are not
interested in me! I am not going to entertain you in any way!"

It reminds me of being in a mall, and looking for that one interesting store
that I want to go to. I pore over a directory, scanning over a whole bunch of
logos, for brands whose names I can't even remember. Eventually I find the one
I want, and in that moment, if you asked me what else was on that directory I
could not tell you. The new logo is on that directory somewhere, attracting no
attention.

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georgebonnr
And what is going on with the exclamation mark by the search bar when you
visit this page?
[http://www.yahoo.com/dailylogo](http://www.yahoo.com/dailylogo) sigh...

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twodayslate
Seems fun to me.

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georgebonnr
Looks herky jerky and overwrought on my machine. Don't mind the idea, just
seems exaggerated in the execution.

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tomflack
How long until their regional affiliates update their design? For example:

[http://au.yahoo.com](http://au.yahoo.com) (Yahoo! 7)
[http://www.yahoo.co.jp/](http://www.yahoo.co.jp/) (Yahoo Japan)

I really feel that while these spinoffs seemed like a good idea at the time
(and in the case of Yahoo Japan were very successful spinoffs) having separate
businesses with different branding will come back and hurt Yahoo! soon.

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ssivark
For me, the Yahoo logo was all about differently-sized characters, the fat Y
with one of the arms sticking out and the big fat exclamation mark. All of
those cues have vanished.

The new logo seems almost devoid of flavor. The rest of their homepage has a
nice UI without gradients, and this newly adopted logo seems like a extremely
odd misfit, almost out of place. There's absolutely no sense of belonging.

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kjjj333asf
Not sure why people are so bitter, but personally I think it looks good. In
fact, I even like the bevel... adds a touch of nostalgia to the 1990's.

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avenger123
It's nice. It kind of grows on you. Feels more modern (which if that was the
goal, mission accomplished).

Seems to work even better as animated gif (like on the main home page).

I'm glad the logo didn't get completely butchered into something
unrecognizable. That would have been a big loss of brand equity.

I feel the old logo just needed some modern tones and these new logo has it.

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TheZenPsycho
It says "My parents named me something stupid, but please take me seriously
now. I'm a businessman. Look at my suit."

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keypusher
I think it looks pretty bad, but this was the first time I visited a Yahoo
site in years so I guess their plan is working.

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brickmort
you know what? i like it. for the past month or so i kept thinking "this is
such a bad idea on yahoo's part..." but now that the new logo's here, i
realized that it is, in fact, a good move. it's sleek, modern yet it still
looks 'familiar'. kudos to the yahoo design/marketing team.

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uptown
For a few days some people will say it sucks, and some people will say they
like it better - then nobody say much of anything about their logo ... new or
old.

Ultimately, they'll still be facing the same challenges they faced 31 days ago
... just like every company they call their competition.

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pekru
Surprised nobody came up with a Yahಠ_ಠ!

This one seemed classy enough and modern
...[http://media.tumblr.com/bd2439f8e2fc7a08ce923374af8f3758/tum...](http://media.tumblr.com/bd2439f8e2fc7a08ce923374af8f3758/tumblr_inline_msfhtjZW4R1qz4rgp.jpg)

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georgebonnr
If you watch the video the logo looks fantastic from 0:25 to about 0:33. And
then everything goes to shit.

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null_ptr
Well good for them for making the logo changing process fun to follow. A logo
is after all only a small part of a company's success (compared to the actual
value of its products), might as well have a light-hearted attitude about it.

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themodelplumber
That "blueprint" in the video is pulled right out of thin air. Sort of the
pinnacle of the "we live in a scientific world and I don't know science so I'm
making this up as an excuse for my intuition" thing.

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swr
Reminds me of the Twitter logo video [1], but at least that one made sense
with respect to how the logo was created from three sets of overlapping
circles [2].

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh20pdCrCAU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh20pdCrCAU)
[2] [https://blog.twitter.com/2012/taking-flight-
twitterbird](https://blog.twitter.com/2012/taking-flight-twitterbird)

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eksith
I feel like there's a hint of Google in there. Could just be my imagination,
but with the exception of the much sharper center gradient divide, it's a
close 3D effect. The only other difference is the uneven font size.

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wpeterson
It looks like our data on Polar Polls predicted the new logo selection in
advance:

[http://polarb.com/polls/tags/yahoo30](http://polarb.com/polls/tags/yahoo30)

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kaplejon
This logo looks great in the "white on background" flavor, but I have to shake
my head at its "purple with bevel" iteration. A win and a loss, in the same
small reveal.

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brennenHN
I'm not sure Yahoo's brand was ready to be logo-ified. They're currently in
such a radical state of change that it feels like an impossible task.

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kristiandupont
I wonder if the bevel on Google's logo inspired them to do it as well because
they feel that it signals "search engine" or something.

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Nomlab
Wow, can't believe they took such a big step backwards. Purple w/ black shadow
and bevel ... this must have been a decision by committee.

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nej
Here's the link to all the logos:
[http://www.yahoo.com/dailylogo](http://www.yahoo.com/dailylogo)

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georgebonnr
I would think they would need more than anybody right now to broadcast a fresh
and youthful design. This doesn't seem to be either. Odd...

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mrslx
Wow, they are really trying very hard to come up with silly gimmicks to stay
top-of-mind, only way to sell ads these days.

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smurph
The bevel is pointless. You won't be able to notice it in on smaller versions
of the logo, which it most of them.

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chatman
Yahoo's red logo back in 90s was their best ever. All this purple doesn't look
good.

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joshdotsmith
Can someone please do a 99designs project to see if they get a better logo
from that?

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joemaller1
All I keep seeing is the negative space between the Y and the A. Not in a good
way.

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abdophoto
The bevel looks pretty bad. I really liked what they day 10 and day 1.

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blackysky
the logo is bad and I'm not even hating, the 3D effect is horrible on a large
screen with a high resolution. Drop that weird word art effect...

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psteinweber
Feels to early for a tribute to the 00s.

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SCdF
Still with the ! eh. Surprising.

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enraged_camel
Did Yahoo! need a new logo, or is this some kind of "look at us, we're re-
inventing ourselves!" theater?

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ritchiea
What exactly do you consider the purpose of a logo to be?

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gojomo
Animated logos are the future - including on storefronts, the tops of
monumental buildings, and vehicles.

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undoware
Terrible. This is so embarrassing. We're losing you, Marissa.

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thecooluser
Bleh.

