

Survata Tests Yahoo’s 30 Logos - chadyj
http://subtraction.com/2013/09/04/survata-tests-yahoos-30-logos/

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potatolicious
> _" A logo is really a visual manifestation of all the complex ideas, values
> and people that fuel a company"_

You lost me here.

A logo is a marketing tool. What part of the yellow and red double arches says
"hamburgers"? What part of a weird green mermaid-thing says "coffee"? What
part of staggered striped blue lines say... actually nevermind, that one
actually _does_ say "IBM", literally.

A logo is more frequently abstract than it is descriptive, and the more iconic
you go the less they have to do with the company's business or even its
people. How does an apple with a chunk taken out of it represent high-end
consumer electronics?

How do concentric red circles describe "bargain department store"? How does a
strange six-pointed star describe "Wal-Mart", or any of _its_ values,
products, businesses, or people? Exactly what does the iconic cursive Coca-
Cola script represent? Is the flowing script supposed to represent refreshment
and thirst-quenching?

A logo's primary purpose is to be immediately recognizable and indelibly
associated with a brand. That brand may evoke lifestyles, ideas, values, and
people - but I assure you the logo has next to no role in that. Shrewd,
persistent, on-message marketing does that. In some circles Wal-Mart's brand
has become associated with gross corporate abuse, representing all that is
wrong with greed and capitalism - I don't believe Wal-Mart's logo had anything
to do with this branding (or rather, mis-branding).

This is a tempest in a teapot. Disregarding the fact that Yahoo openly
acknowledged this as more of a plaything than a serious attempt at rebranding,
the logo really doesn't have that much to do with the sort of brand Yahoo
wants to build for itself, or the values and ideas they seek to represent.

~~~
bigiain
"What part of the yellow and red double arches says "hamburgers"? What part of
a weird green mermaid-thing says "coffee"? What part of staggered striped blue
lines say... actually nevermind, that one actually does say "IBM", literally."

There is, though, a reason why the IBM logo is blue and blocky, not yellow and
arch-y - same as there's a reason the mermaid-thing isn't a geometric-thing
and is green-on-brown not red-on-yellow.

There's a language that images and colors speak - not in specific terms like
"hamburger", "coffee", or "computer" \- but in impressions and feelings like
"dependable" or "fun" or "earthy". I don't know enough about that language to
speak it fluently, but I do usually "get the gist of what they're saying" in a
well designed logo(/logo-type/website/landing-page/ … ), and I've worked with
great designers who can explain exactly what the message they're sending with
their design is - and follow along and agree with their choices. I suspect
your "next to no role" in evoking feelings and emotions is significantly
undervaluing the power of good graphic designers. It's by no means a
replacement for "shrewd, persistent, on-message marketing", it's certainly
something that can both help and hinder those efforts.

If you let the public "choose" your logo, you're choosing to accept your logo
will send whatever message _they_ want it to send. That's quite likely not
going to be the best fit with your business plan or the roadmap for your
company and products moving into the future.

~~~
potatolicious
I agree design language matters - don't take me as anti-designer. I believe
that this article _severely and massively_ overstates it, though. Effective
design _hints_ at the intended message (sometimes, though as you get more
iconic this design message becomes more and more abstract), it does not build
the brand.

Take Whole Foods as an example - the typography, colors, and accents on the
logo all refer to a desired corporate identity, but it would IMO be severely
overstating the case to say that this is the embodiment of the company's
brand, as the article seems to be claiming for Yahoo. The logo is but one
_tiny_ part of a huge puzzle, the vast majority of which lies firmly in the
realm of marketing and branding.

Honestly, IMO Yahoo could change their logo to nearly any of the crazy options
that they played with, and their brand would not be measurably worse off (or
better off). Once you move away from "Bob's Burger Palace" with a giant neon
burger for a logo, you're getting into territory where the perceptual impact
of your logo becomes more and more esoteric, hard to measure, and subtle. I
sincerely doubt _anyone_ looks at the Yahoo logo and goes "those disjoint
serif letter sure sound like a fun and dynamic website!"

There are good logos and bad logos, IMO the notion that logo design and
measurably influence brand perception (especially when you get into extremely
abstract logos like Yahoo, Apple, or even Google) is true, but severely
overstated by some designers. It would seem to me that a successful logo is
less about messaging and more about its longevity and ability to be iconic.

If you took some text and wrote it IBM-style, it would still be visibly IBM.
If you took the red-yellow combination and put it on something without the
arches, it would still be visibly McDonald's. The mermaid figure that
represents Starbucks is so out there, and the green so consistently applied to
all of its branding, that it can stand alone without the name of the company
and still be instantly recognizable. _Those_ factors are IMO far, far more
important to a logo than the extremely abstract ideas and values they
represent.

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CoffeeDregs
Quoting from TFA:

    
    
        This is the kind of nonsense that results from 
        fundamentally misunderstanding what a logo is.
    

Rephrasing:

    
    
        This is the kind of [blog post] that results from
        fundamentally misunderstanding what a 
        [marketing stunt] is [and then proceeds to market/promote
        the thing about which it's complaining].
    

After looking at some of the logos, it was very clear that Yahoo was playing
around and not seriously testing logos...

~~~
siddboots
They may have included non-serious candidates as part of the experiment
design, e.g. for control purposes, or simply to make up numbers.

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ewzimm
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.

~~~
TheZenPsycho
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.

~~~
cbsmith
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?

~~~
TheZenPsycho
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.

------
jey
> This “face-off chart” in particular has all the charm of pulling out a
> spreadsheet on a date.

What's wrong with data? The author doesn't actually explain how it's certain
that there are no metrics which could act as a reasonable proxy for the
quality of a logo's "visual manifestation of all the complex ideas, values and
people that fuel a company".

~~~
chadyj
Instead of a logo imagine it was a word or phrase that encapsulated the
complex ideas and values of Yahoo. Does data drive or validate the meaning?
Can it? Design has its own inherent semantics and semiotics in much the same
way language does.

~~~
jey
You can take measurements with respect to particular objectives. For example,
does product description A or product description B lead to higher sales? I
agree you can't measure something as vague as "complex ideas and values", but
you can certainly find more concrete things that are quantifiable that are
decent proxies.

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elliottcarlson
This seems to be a re-occurring misunderstanding. The 30 logos are not
candidates. They are not potential logos. They are "our way of having some fun
while honoring the legacy of our present logo" [1] and were used to get people
used to the idea of change. There were horrible logos in there - pretty sure
the people making them even knew that. The new logo, as it will be revealed
tonight at midnight EST, will be the actual logo - everything else was tongue
in cheek. It has people talking about Yahoo. It has people wondering what the
actual new logo will be.

The Survata survey is a third party company making statistics for something
that will give them self promotion - nothing wrong with that, but that is what
it is.

[1] [http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/57582020969/kicking-
off-30-days...](http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/57582020969/kicking-off-30-days-
of-change)

------
callmeed
I don't know why design snobbery grates on me so much but it does. Take for
example Coca Cola. They have been around for 100+ years and their logo has
evolved over that time [1]. Did anyone care? NO. Did they care when they
changed the actual product (New Coke). YES. [2]

First off, this is Yahoo! and I'm sure most rockstar designers are _too cool_
to work at/for them anyway.

Second, plenty of established brands change their logos slightly. Big deal.
All these non-candidates were still purple, still a wordmark (or whatever you
designers insist a "logo of letters" be called).

Third, if they want to show off a bunch of candidates or non-
candidates–again–big deal. In what way could such a move possibly hurt their
actual usage/bottom line (seriously, I want to know).

It's funny how much we talk about disruption in the entrepreneurial space–yet,
when it comes to design the process and tenets are too sacred and established
to question. As if logo design has been around for millennia.

[1] [http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/125/history-of-coca-cola-
logo.htm...](http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/125/history-of-coca-cola-logo.html)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke)

------
asenna
As others have pointed out, this is not really an experiment for Yahoo to
figure out which logo works best. It is just an attempt to shake things up,
trying to appeal to the modern internet users. You can perhaps see this more
in the line of kinda-Google-doodle-but-not-really

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nazgulnarsil
Companies redesign logos all the time and it's highly doubtful all of them
have endless angst over representing the gestalt of their company values to
their customers with it. This piece reeks of self-important design student.

~~~
bigiain
If there's nothing approaching "angst" over a redesign - why aren't they just
sticking with the old design?

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kyro
I am thoroughly convinced that Yahoo! is purposefully putting out 30 crappy
logos so that the stunning one they've spent considerable time and money on
and that they're releasing tomorrow will just seem that much better.

~~~
trhaynes
This was my hypothesis, too. I'm disappointed.

------
est
Put the logo dispute aside, any great products from Yahoo delivered recently?

All I see is good & old ones get closed.

Heck, Yahoo China simply decided to close all together.

[http://cn.yahoo.com](http://cn.yahoo.com)

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sfled
Not a logo. A logotype.

~~~
cdcarter
Logotype is a subset of Logo.

