
Logo, Bullshit & Co., Inc. - pascal07
http://ia.net/blog/logo-bullshit-co-inc/
======
Pxtl
Personally, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. I think the
unprofessionalism, the BS, the Mayer-hands-on thing... that _is_ part of
Yahoo's new branding strategy.

It's all about making Yahoo feel more personal. More like your friend. Mayer
is trying to personally invite you out for coffee to and talk about the fun
she had bashing out their logo.

I'm sure there are refinements that are happening behind-the-scenes after
Mayer's "weekend". Hopefully resized forms of the logo will still get some TLC
- the public doesn't generally notice when those things happen.

Remember the demographic that Yahoo survived upon - women. Non-geeky grown-up
middle-class women. That's why the new logo reminds you of a department store
like Macy's, or the makeup counter at Shoppers Drug Mart. That's who Mayer is
targeting with this ad, even this blog. It's a huge number of people that most
of the technorati ignore - Facebook captured that market practically _by
accident_ , and Pinterest is exploding because somebody finally thought to
actually aim in that direction _on purpose_. And what's pinterest about?
Craftsmanship. Craftswomanship. Getting your hands dirty on a fun little
artistic project.

Like making a logo.

Latter-day Yahoo has always found strength in ignoring the geek elite. They
lost the geek elite a long time ago. This includes you, design geeks.

~~~
tilsammans
I think part of why everyone gets so offended by this situation is that
Mayer's little adventure does nothing at all for communications professionals,
in fact does the entire state of the art a huge disservice and tells other
people that just playing around on a weekend is a good idea.

Over the last few decades we've advanced the state of the art so immensely
that people from the 70s would not believe you. Instant, global communication.
World wide brands. Full color customized print runs in hours. On mugs! Page
layout, design, photography and lithography by one person on a PC that costs
less than 3k. It's all amazing, it's hardly fathomable.

What is good about doing brand positioning professionally, is that you are
feeding back into that process, advancing basically the human condition
(excuse the hyperbole) and generally leaving the world better than you found
it. What Mayer is doing, is taking a huge dump all over that process and
setting back an entire industry. I sure as hell hope this is not the beginning
of a regression back into the CEO's smart nephew drawing up business cards in
CorelDRAW! or something. We would have peaked as far as design and
communication strategy is concerned and that's just sad.

~~~
demallien
It's a mistake to think that this whole exercise was about changing the logo.
Mayer has inherited a demotivated and dispirited team of developers and
designers that she has to forge into a company capable of competing with
Google.

One of the things that she can do to motivate her teams is to take an interest
in what they are doing - a weekend retreat for the design of the logo? Great!
Marissa cares about what I'm doing, I'm important to the company!

On the other hand, having your CEO show an interest in what you are doing is
generally speaking a huge motivator for people. It's cold indifference to
anything you do that will drive people away.

I'm willing to bet that the actual target for the logo redesign story was
internal. Mayer is sending a very clear signal to all Yahoos that yes, they
_are_ good enough, and no, she isn't going to get external help to do the
things that are core to Yahoo's business.

~~~
tilsammans
Very good points, my spirits would indeed be lifted if the CEO did this with
me.

------
toddmorey
I've been around adverting for a long time. I've been in agencies, I've
freelanced, I've been the client. I've worked with individuals that charge
$70/hr and teams that charge $20,000 per day.

The author is completely right on one point: "...the saying in design: 'if it
looks right, it is right.'”

Here's the dirty secret: All logos are designed in a momentary collision of
experience and accident. All logos are, in a sense, designed in a weekend.
That doesn't mean it isn't done thoughtfully. But that huge research spend? It
sometimes guides the design a little, but it's mostly there to reverse-justify
the final result (and of course expense) with the client.

He's also asking us to assume the only thought Yahoo ever put into their logo
and apparently, their brand, was that one 36-hour period. And the implication
of course is that a large spend with an agency would result in a design that's
both more calculated and less contrived.

As the author says, bullshit.

~~~
mcantelon
Yeah, given how easy it is for folks to learn the tools of their profession,
graphic designers have an interest in aggrandizing their roles.

The Nike logo was designed for $35 by a graphic design student rather than an
experienced firm. Phil Knight said he didn't "love" it, but it would work.

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

~~~
mietek
Learning the tools is not the same as learning the skills.

Of course, learning anything is easy — just practice for 10,000 hours and
you're all set!

~~~
adestefan
You're missing the point. The point is the logo really doesn't mean squat. In
the long run in it's the products and/or the advertisement with the logo
tacked on.

------
smacktoward
I'm of two minds on this piece.

On the one hand, the author is absolutely right that a good professional
designer can bring things to the process that enthusiastic amateurs cannot. A
really good logo doesn't just look cool, it communicates something about the
nature and spirit of the company visually. It lays down a marker: "this is who
we are." A designer who knows the grammar of visual communication will have a
better chance of delivering that than will someone who doesn't.

On the other hand, the author sadly doesn't do a great job of arguing the
above point. Rather than, say, taking some great logos and pulling them apart
for us to show how they do what they do, we just hear a lot of complaints
about how the way Yahoo did theirs was "unprofessional." It makes it sound
like the main complaint is that Yahoo had the gall to cut designers out of the
process rather than that _they chose a path that was more likely to result in
a crappy logo_ , which strikes me as a more powerful (and accurate) complaint.

In other words, outside the community of professional designers, nobody cares
if Marissa Mayer hurt some designers' feelings. What they care about is how
Marissa Mayer is stewarding the Yahoo brand. If you want to convince them that
your way is right and her way is wrong, don't show them how her way threatens
_your_ business; show them how her way threatens _her_ business.

~~~
emhart
I disagree, he actually makes it clear on multiple occasions throughout the
piece that his critique is not about the end product of the logo and what
could or could not have happened in the hands of a real designer.

His critique is about her unserious approach to the process, an approach that
she then justified in a cloud of post-process rationalization. His critique is
saying that if this is the way she treats the logo redesign (even celebrates
the casualness of the approach) then is she actually a competent steward for
the Yahoo brand.

I think it's a question worth asking and find that many of the comments here
seem very focused on the debate about the merits of the logo design, rather
than the question of brand management which both the piece, and thankfully
your comment, at least attempt to address.

~~~
jerf
And part of why I ended up skimming the piece is that I'm not convinced
original post can be interpreted to that degree.

Remember, this is (putatively) a direct communication from the CEO of a large
multi-billion dollar company. If it sounds breezy and informal, it is because
she wanted it to sound breezy and informal. Whether or not the actual process
described is breezy and informal is hard to ascertain under the fact that she
wanted it to sound that way. Every sentence may be literally true, but who
knows what was omitted to fit the breezy-and-informal template.

I think an awful lot of people are over-interpreting a chunk of text that
probably doesn't contain anywhere near as much information as it appears to.
CEOs at this scale are masters of using lots of words and appearing to say
things while in fact saying either nothing at all, or saying something that
bears very little resemblance to the surface.

~~~
jfarmer
> And part of why I ended up skimming the piece is that I'm not convinced
> original post can be interpreted to that degree.

Not to interject -- well, ok, to interject -- but isn't this completely
backwards? Shouldn't you skim articles you mostly agree with, but read more
intensely those you disagree with? You get less out of the former and probably
know what they'll say, regardless.

~~~
jerf
I read the first couple of pages intensely, came to that conclusion, skimmed
the rest for why I might be wrong. Fair question.

------
mbesto
Ha, I just wrote something very similiar about this:
[http://www.techdisruptive.com/2013/09/04/logo-doesnt-
matter/](http://www.techdisruptive.com/2013/09/04/logo-doesnt-matter/)

 _No, it’s not getting attention. It’s gaining trust. Ironically, for that you
need a reflective, clear, and consistent brand identity. A different logo
powered by bullshit doesn’t convey identity and trustworthiness. It conveys
desperation._

While the overall sentiment of the article is sound, I slightly disagree with
this. First, this whole story of "creating the logo in a weekend" with an
"intern who did some motion graphics to convey it's uniformity" is pure and
simple, a publicity stunt, and a good one at that.[1] Personally I don't think
there is an intern named Max who did that (most likely an agency), but this
subtly conveys the perception of something that Yahoo is missing - innovation
by small teams. The reality is that Yahoo _does_ have a brand problem (just as
MS does in the consumer-mobile space), so they have two tactics they need to
implement in order to properly manage the brand:

1\. Change the perception of the brand (changing the logo to match the new
found brand perception is a good way to do that)

2\. Create buzz around the fact that the perception has now changed.

Marissa's plan for the logo did just that. I think it's a good strategy and
something Stringer Bell would have been taught in his business class.[2]

[1]-[http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/60336044815/geeking-
out-o...](http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/60336044815/geeking-out-on-the-
logo)

[2]-[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbbZc2pab9k](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbbZc2pab9k)

~~~
rmrfrmrf
Except it doesn't change my perception at all. My previous perception of
Marissa Mayer was that she was a "work hard, not smart" overachiever who has
become more known for her ability to make her numbers (like how long she works
a week, how many weeks of maternity leave she takes, how many extra jobs
around the office she piles on her plate, etc.) look good than to actually
produce results. My perception was that Yahoo's board, in its infinite
incompetence, hired her purely because she was infamous at Google for her work
ethic (yet clearly didn't get the memo from Google as to why she wasn't moving
further up the ranks), expecting her mere presence at Yahoo to turn the
company around.

This "stunt," as you call it, did nothing to change that. In fact, it makes me
have even less faith in Yahoo. How great do Yahoo's investors feel that their
CEO is spending her time on trying to be designer instead of streamlining and
turning her company around.

The one part of Yahoo's brand that was at least MILDLY interesting was its
personality. I mean, the name is based on someone screaming! The new logo
makes it look like they should change their name to "Ahem" or "::Clears Throat
Politely::" Which brings me to my final point that, what scares me most about
this logo redesign is that Mayer clearly doesn't understand her own company's
brand perception. She had the opportunity to hone in on what makes Yahoo great
and let that quirkiness shine, but instead she took a zamboni to her brand in
a failed attempt to make a more "mature" look. If Mayer was so excited about
literally tilting an exclamation point 9 degrees to the right as some sort of
liberating self-expression, can you imagine how up-tight people must be over
there now?

~~~
salemh
_How great do Yahoo 's investors feel that their CEO is spending her time on
trying to be designer instead of streamlining and turning her company around._

Yahoo! Stock: Oct. 22 2012: $15.77 March 18 2013: 22.01 June 24 2013: $24.07
July 16 2013: $26.88 Marissa appointed July 18 2013: $29.66 Sept. 5th 2013:
28.23

I'm not sure how commentators are extrapolating that this is the sole focus of
Marissa as CEO.

 _If Mayer was so excited about literally tilting an exclamation point 9
degrees to the right as some sort of liberating self-expression, can you
imagine how up-tight people must be over there now?_

Perhaps, as the GP states, she is appealing to the demographic needed to drive
business versus its shareholders.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
The stock prices are going up because of Alibaba's performance. Yahoo's
revenue, however, is down.

------
mattzito
It seems odd that the writer first bashes MM for just getting in a room with
some designers over a weekend, criticizing the concept of doing something so
important in such a slapdash fashion, and then bashes her for polling the
company about what they'd like to see in the logo, because it's "Design by
polling". But - doesn't that show they did a lot of work upfront, that it
wasn't _just_ a slapdash effort?

The whole article reads like a bitter rant from the company that didn't get
hired to do the work, instead of a thoughtful discussion of the logo itself
(I'm not saying that iA was in the running to do the work, just that the tone
is oddly hostile).

~~~
slantyyz
>> the tone is oddly hostile

I wouldn't read much into his tone. He tends to be very opinionated, and he
tends to express his opinions in a fashion very much like Linus Torvalds.

~~~
temuze
There's a difference between opinionated and rude. I don't think rude in a
company blog makes the organization look good. I'd be less likely to hire them
because it seems they can't provide constructive criticism without being
jerks.

~~~
slantyyz
Some people use a "shock jock" tone as a tool for self-promotion. The article
did manage to make it to the front page of HN, after all.

And while the tone may turn some people off (myself included), it is probably
the right tone and post for the target market of the OP's products.

------
SimianLogic2
How I perceived this article: I'm a thoughtful designer and pissed off that an
"amateur" CEO is dipping her toes in my sandbox. Also, if I can bill a client
for months of logo design and they see a Fortune 500 CEO doing it themselves
they may question if I'm worth it.

(I know nothing about the author, so this is just my perception.)

Yes, there's some validity to calling out the bullshit in Mayer's fluffy post.
But equally mixed in are just as many nonsense bits...

------
yesimahuman
Not to discount the technical analysis, but it still begs the question of
whether any of those points matter for non-designers, or for the business.
Just because they didn't go through an agency doesn't mean the logo won't be
successful and the attention won't help the business.

I hate to bring up Google, but they've done pretty well despite having a
history of logos no self-respecting agency would ever produce.

~~~
rubinelli
Yeah, I feel for those agencies, and at times like this I'm glad to be a
software developer. A whippersnapper may _say_ he can do my job over a
weekend, but delivering it is another thing entirely.

I don't think we have to bring up Google. In fact, we don't even have to go
beyond Yahoo. For all the talk on design and building a strong visual
identity, Yahoo in its glory days was visually atrocious. And it didn't mater
a lick.

~~~
colmvp
Because it just had to do a set of things functionally right.

Whereas branding is more important in an industry where products are similar
to one another in function, like consumer goods.

------
gamache
There are some CEOs who think they can do anything, and design logotype over
the weekend.

There are other CEOs who think they can do anything, and start their own space
program (with an electric car company on the side).

~~~
guynamedloren
And there are other CEOs who think they can do anything, but don't. Instead,
they do nothing, and sometimes those companies die.

Let's be glad there are CEOs to talk about that are _doing things_.

~~~
colmvp
And then there are CEOs who trust their team to make things and don't
micromanage every aspect.

------
ChuckMcM
Wow, that was a great read. So many great collisions of emotions and ideas.

After reading it I understood that the author was deeply offended by the
characterization that the Yahoo! logo could be redesigned in a weekend. I get
that, they work at a high end logo design studio, it's like telling a Ferrari
mechanic you spent the weekend with some tools from Pep boys and tuned your
Ferrari to give it an additional 15% BHP. The dissonance of knowing, as a
professional in the space, what it takes to re-design a logo, and Marissa's
characterization of the same, really irked this guy. That left me wondering
how much of that irritation was professional pride.

The meta point the author is trying to make, which is that brand and logo are
intertwined but the dependency relationship is backwards in Marissa's post,
reminded me of the clothes argument. That is the argument about the phrase
"The clothes make the man."

The two sides of that argument are that your a better person if you dress
well, and if you dress well you are a better person. Which follows which? Can
that even be resolved? I had this discussion with my teenage daughter when she
wanted to dress like a pop star, who dressed like a slut. We had the whole
talk about how clothes are a sort of 'marketing' for the person you are, and
people will set their interactions with you to how you dress first, and the
way they know you second. So if their first setting is 'slut' then you may get
so pissed off at them that they never get to see the real you, and a
friendship opportunity is missed.

So our author has extrapolated that it is how you are as a company, that
emerges in your logo, not your logo defines how you are as a company. And I
tend to agree with that, but I also know that companies evolve based on how
they see themselves. So the argument that Marissa is trying to create a
_perception_ which then manifests as reality is certainly plausible. I know
when Yahoo! called me a while back (in the Carol Bartz days) and said they
were looking for engineering leadership for the Web's #1 media company I
thought "Hmm, this is a company that is not in touch with what they are." but
it was what they were trying to be.

So my summary of the article is that the author's pride was wounded by Marissa
making it sound like Logo design was trivial, and attacked both her
understanding of logos and the whole branding process in response. Along the
way he gave us a couple of interesting things to think about.

~~~
csbrooks
> I had this discussion with my teenage daughter

As a parent, I'm picturing you giving this very articulate and coherent
argument, and her stomping her feet saying "dad! I _hate_ you!" and storming
off. :)

------
Terretta
> _Next she should try the same with Yahoo’s server architecture. Ask everyone
> about the best server configuration and then put together a brief for the
> system administrators._

Well, yeah, actually. Given a server architecture problem and a company still
somewhat silo'd with devops scattered on various teams, asking everyone to
weigh in on the architecture _would_ be likely to improve the plan over a
single person or even single team coming up with it. Think of the Jainist tale
of the blind men and the elephant to understand why.

People unlikely to be able to contribute won't have a strong opinion, while
people able to contribute will, from their viewpoint. Strong opinions here
represent gaps in what's being done versus what may be needed. And while you
may still get a bell curve type of response, you're looking for business case
viewpoints that might not otherwise have been considered and tech ideas from
the tails that may give you a competitive edge.

I think the author's sarcasm here falls especially flat.

When it comes to a logo, even more so. Logos are about appealing to people,
trying to convey something that people connect with. Employees like to feel
proud of where they work. Their identity gets wrapped up in the company
identity. Asking the whole team what they feel about identity is a great data
point.

And more cynically, now all these employees feel as though their suggestions
were listened to. Come to Yahoo, where your ideas matter. What a great place
to work!

I'm disappointed in iA for suggesting employees shouldn't have a voice in how
they see and relate to their own brand symbols.

~~~
njr123
> People unlikely to be able to contribute won't have a strong opinion

Oh man, you are so so wrong. Sure the people who know _nothing_ won't
contribute, but there will be a large number of people who know 'just enough
to be dangerous' with very strong opinions that are not only wrong, but so
completely obviously wrong you will not even know how to respond. And (in this
hypothetical exersize), you will have to spend the next 2 months explaining to
all of them why their ideas won't be used, at the same time without offending
anyone.

~~~
Terretta
The people whose opinions are both fervent and wrong will tend to be either
outliers, or mostly wrong the same (junior) way, and easily filtered out
assuming you have any amount of expertise yourself. The opinions you aren't
sure about are exactly the opinions your team should have a look at.

What you're looking for are insights about business requirements or outside
the box solutions you yourself missed or didn't stumble on. You're cynically
mining the group as a business knowledge and solution brainstorming source,
with an open mind to any wisdom it offers but with a healthy grain of salt.

And no, you don't have to explain why each individual idea won't be used, if
up front you say, "Our time and resources are limited, so unfortunately we
just won't be able to do everything everyone suggests."

If whether you offend is important to you and large numbers of people are
likely to take offense because they're too clueless that not every single idea
can be reconciled at the same time, your company may not be suited to this
exercise.

If whether you offend is important to you and only small numbers of people
will take offense, wrap up after the feedback with "Wow, everyone, fantastic
input. While not every idea will make it into the product, every single idea
helped inform our approach. Thanks to each and every one of you!" In other
words, respond in the aggregate, not individually.

Finally, if you're talking about large numbers of people and you don't have
the authority to, or you don't know how to, respond to people in aggregate,
then this approach isn't for you.

~~~
grey-area
I'm curious - have you tried this in real life? The mediocrity of consensus
has doomed any such attempt I've seen in a real company.

If so, could you share the details as it sounds interesting, if unorthodox and
counterintuitive.

If not, what makes you so confident it would work?

~~~
Terretta
Yes, I've tried it and I've had useful or surprising input come from
unexpected quarters. Not always, but enough to make asking routine. Sometimes
we'll even get a new team member, someone who'd been thinking about this
longer but their group didn't need it, for example.

Sorry if I sounded as though I was advocating consensus about a systems
architecture across the whole company. I am not. I'm talking about gathering
data, and that's the expectation that should be set.

Collecting input informs the decision making role, but that role shouldn't be
abdicated.

~~~
grey-area
Thanks for the clarification, I agree gathering data from everyone is useful,
as long as decisions are then taken by someone competent in the field (be it
branding or systems architecture).

I'm not sure about this new Yahoo logo - there are some nice points (the
bigger O at the end to imply an exclamation, the simplicity), but the tilted
!, kerning and new font are pretty awful and it does look like the CEO had a
hand in designing it on a weekend. I just visited the yahoo home page to see
it - the exclamation animating in for no reason is particularly grating, and
the positioning of the logo is also amateur (it should hang on the left over
the nav below for balance), so I can't really see the process employed as
Yahoo as anything but a failure here.

It's a shame this article focussed so much on the process rather than the end
result, but I think he just assumed the end result was clearly, objectively
bad.

------
luscious
Says the guy with a 'strategic design' firm... Bullshit player lobbing
bullshit claims at bullshit.

Maybe he's A/B-ing some secondary bullshit article to see what can get better
rank on HN. What's the best link bait for placating boredom and wasting
attention on derivative industries suckling at the teat.

------
solistice
Did anyone actually notice the logo changed?

I didn't, and frankly, it seems like such a little change, I doubt many even
noticed.

Changing your logo to change your brand identity is the business equivalent of
buying new running shoes to start shaping up. It doesn't quite work, does it?

So I'm glad they didn't spend thousands and ten thousands of dollars on a new
logo, because if the logo change is just ego stroking for the CEO, there isn't
much use of spending months and awe-inspiring sums on it (like that matters).

------
moron4hire
Whenever I hear someone say "not being professional", I replace "being
professional" with "conforming to my overly narrow world view." While
professionalism is an important concept, it has never been the case that I
have seen it referenced properly. Instead, it's usually just some SJ who can't
sleep at night unless everyone fits into a little box.

------
kens
Five years from now, the logo will be the perfect hook for articles about
Marissa Mayer and Yahoo. If Yahoo does well, the logo incident will show her
brilliance and how her hands-on work saved the company. If Yahoo does poorly,
the logo will be an emblem of how her micromanagement and distraction from the
core business ruined the company.

What I'm trying to say is that the stories told in retrospect always make what
happens seem obvious, but looking forward, it's impossible to know.

------
ctdonath
I'm wondering if anyone shared my experience on this:

I'd seen a few posts referencing a change in the Yahoo logo. Having not been
to the site for a long time (year or more?) I wasn't inclined to see. Then
comes this article, which I get sucked into (proper & creative use of
obscenity _can_ work), and read the whole diatribe... _without knowing what
the new logo is_. Worked up about the change, having now learned its details
without knowing the result, I take a look.

Yahoo.com. New logo...meh. It screams "corporate" without the big-budget
expensive-talent origin. It speaks of whimsy and cross-discipline
inventiveness...beaten into submission by an unhappy "you did my job and now I
have to clean up the mess" department.

The problem isn't that they didn't pay a large sum for its development, it's
that there are people who are very good at such things (be it highly paid or
tangential hobby) and none of them were on the weekend team. I'm reminded of
the story of Steve Jobs calling a top guy at Google late one weekend to
complain that their shade of yellow was _wrong_ \- and he was right.

------
izolate
If Yahoo! really wanted to signal their change towards modernity and
freshness, they were already sitting on their perfect logo:
[http://i.imgur.com/VpAwbwS.png](http://i.imgur.com/VpAwbwS.png)

------
bruceboughton
>> And what is more efficient than working directly with the CEO on the brand
identity? A dream setup. Also, it’s cheap. A weekend for a logo, instead of
paying a branding agency millions and waiting months for something that can be
done in a couple of days? That’s smart business!

>> Is it?

Yes. People will bitch about your logo whether you paid $100mn for it or
hacked it over the weekend. Logos, like names, don't actually matter much. It
is the change that is important, not the design.

------
felix
I'd say the most annoying part (of so many annoying parts) was when he says:

"The hard part is defining what your brand is and what it aims to become."

And then somehow supports that with the opposite:

"Is Yahoo “whimsical, yet sophisticated. Modern and fresh […] human, personal
[…] proud”? Currently, Yahoo is not associated with being whimsical or
sophisticated, rather it is mostly boring and dull. It doesn’t portray
modernity or freshness, it feels obsolete and dated."

Apparently had he been hired, he'd have designed a logo to what he believes
are Yahoo's current brand - dullness and obsolescence instead of what he
suggested at the outset which is what you want your brand to be.

------
atacrawl
The fact of the matter is that none of us knows exactly happened that weekend,
including whether it was really a weekend at all. But I think what offends so
many people (myself, to a certain extent, included) is that this whole
episode, as it has played out publicly, represents a certain obnoxiousness
that so many of us have experienced -- executives that are in over their head
inserting themselves into processes they have no business being part of,
leading to results that are at best mediocre. Between Mayer's self-
aggrandizing "'we' did it" post and the amateur hour "30 logos in 30 days"
stunt, the situation resembles a farce. Marissa Mayer was supposed to be
Yahoo's brilliant savior, so why is she playing the role of a stereotypical
clueless CEO?

These Onion stories in tandem seem appropriate here.

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/executive-creative-
too,3102...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/executive-creative-too,31024/)

[http://www.theonion.com/video/ceo-has-special-knack-for-
reco...](http://www.theonion.com/video/ceo-has-special-knack-for-recognizing-
great-ideas,33677/)

(minor edits)

------
hkuo
The author fails to make an important distinction about the people that
created the logo.

It's one thing to say that a design agency came in and designed a logo in a
weekend. It's another thing to say an internal design team bared down to
create a logo in a "weekend" (in quotes, because Marissa may simply be using
the term to mean done in a short timespan).

I've worked on both the agency and client side, and the huge difference is
that an agency comes in and has to learn very quickly about the client's
business (more often than not getting it wrong the first time around) while
the people working at the company live and breathe the company culture day in
and out. At an agency, you're often jumping between a few clients, but unless
you've been the agency of record for a number of years, it is simply not
possible for you to have the depth of understanding that an internal marketing
team will have. What an agency CAN bring is some fresh outsider thinking not
colored by the company's history, but there's no reason the right people
within the company can do so as well.

------
paulsutter
Yahoo really needs an internal culture of agility, listening to customers, and
working weekends. She wants employees reminded of that every time they look at
the logo, even if it means having a logo that's 10% less ideal.

~~~
joshuaellinger
Yeah, I think the audience for this is internal.

It is her way of saying that I can and will fix this company even if I have to
do every bit myself.

Maybe that is what Yahoo! needs to get moving. Crazy way to run a $10B
company.

I think the danger sign in this story is not a sub-standard logo but what it
says about her inability to delegate.

~~~
smacktoward
_> It is her way of saying that I can and will fix this company even if I have
to do every bit myself._

A message that I'm sure will really build trust and cohesion among the rest of
the people she works with. "You people are such losers I have to do your jobs
as well as mine" is not exactly a rousing call to unity.

~~~
colmvp
Indeed. Do I really want the CEO of a company breathing down my neck everytime
I'm designing or releasing something?

------
AliEzer
I totally disagree. And yes, it is just a logo. Google logo is still looking
like it was made by a 10 years old. Sounds like the author is trying to
justify his daily rate. Come on. And when big companies pay millions for a
logo, it's not just for the logo itself, it's for all the identity of the
company. Yahoo! changed its logo but the majority of the people won't even
notice.

------
Prefinem
Honestly, it seems to me that the author is upset when a 10 billion dollar
company just gave a big F you to the design community, and this is a little
hissy fit.

Look at all the news it generated, look at all the people talking about it.
Change, The big old giant company is changing.

And seriously, having worked with a few designers, they are the biggest little
bitch when they feel insulted because you didn't come to them for "fashion"
sense on design.

Reading from a developer's viewpoint, this article is about an "artist"
whining because a 10 billion dollar company said/showed that you can do their
"month" long work in a weekend. The author's "this is unprofessional" is an
attack that yahoo isn't playing by his rules.

------
ethagknight
Logo, Bullshit & Co is quite a self-important read. Sure, Mayer's approached
is unconventional for a large corporation, and it is more in line with a
bootstrapping startup. Yahoo is in financial dire straights, so it is totally
reasonable for Mayer to try an unconventional approach, save serious marketing
dollars, and go her own way. We don't have to love the result, but at the end
of the day, Mayer gave the brand a new face, and she didn't pay much for it.

------
sfjailbird
I agree with this assessment - apparently taking this task so lightly
(especially given the poor outcome) is a baffling and shocking misstep, so bad
that I have to think hard about if there is some hidden angle I'm not seeing,
some genius act of extremely subtle performance marketing. It would seem
extreme to judge a CEO by something relatively trivial and unimportant such as
this, but honestly the way this project was handled makes me very bearish on
Yahoo under Mayer.

------
uptown
Yahoo!'s challenge isn't their logo. Yahoo!'s challenge is ensuring their
brand becomes associated with whatever they do best.

When I think of Google I think of search, ads, and Android, and GMail. When I
think of Microsoft I think of Windows, Office and XBOX. When I think of Apple
I think of the iPhone, and the iPad. When I think of Facebook I think of
photos and privacy (lack thereof).

When I think of Yahoo there's no defining correlation to anything. I realize
many people frequent their services - but personally Yahoo! doesn't stand out
as "best" for anything, and I don't even know what direction they intend to
pursue to change that perception.

------
netrus
I do not agree. The reason logos usually are expensive and take months:
Because what else? If I have a multi-million Dollar marketing budget, sure the
logo will take a good chunk of that, not only, say one permille (still enough
to pay 5 designers for a week). If I want to change the perception of my
company, I will not rush.

Does this mean the logo will perform better than one a design student made
over the weekend? No.

Do many months of work prevent a failure? No.

In the end, Yahoo wants profit through revenue through site usage through
loyal users. Does letter spacing have an influence on this? I doubt it.

~~~
sfjailbird
Seems like anti-intellectualism. Just because you can't recognize an
outstanding logo doesn't mean there is no such thing - it is an art form and a
science, which is the reason there are superstars in the field who command
hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees. (Whether or not a logo has a real
impact on business performance is another discussion.)

~~~
JRFuentes7
True, which reminded me of one such superstar, Paul Rand, who designed the
NeXT logo for Steve Jobs. [http://stocklogos.com/topic/famous-logo-designs-
and-how-much...](http://stocklogos.com/topic/famous-logo-designs-and-how-much-
did-they-cost)

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _one such superstar, Paul Rand, who designed the NeXT logo for Steve Jobs_

... and rather more famously, he designed the IBM logo, which is arguably one
of the most famous and well-respected logos in history.

~~~
antsar
As well as quite a few others you may have heard of (UPS, ABC, Enron, etc.)

[http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/identity](http://www.paul-
rand.com/foundation/identity)

------
ErikAugust
Read "I'm Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google Employee...". I'm surprised no
one has referenced the book.

Fiddling with logos was (and still is) considered a bit sacreligious when it
comes to branding but in the case of Google in the early 2000s, it was a big
hit - what is now Google Doodles. Those were attributed partially to Marissa
Mayer implementing the idea "over the weekend with the help of a designer".

------
mathattack
When I read purple prose about logos, I keep thinking, "Let's just measure
this to see if what they're saying is right." In general the soft-speak of
brands, design and logo can move into meaninglessness. I know it's important.
Design is why Apple succeeds. But it also should be something that can be
explained in plain (and perhaps measurable) English.

------
at-fates-hands
The ironic thing is their old logo is still in a ton of places, like in their
Fantasy Football image on their main login page:

[https://login.yahoo.com](https://login.yahoo.com)

You can also Google it and the image on the right hand side is still the old
logo.

As much as she wanted to change it, they sure didn't do a good job of
scrubbing their properties of the old logo.

~~~
rocky1138
This link shows me the new logo.

------
lotsofcows
I like this sentence: "Your brand architecture is your information
architecture." In italics no less.

Could someone tell me what it means?

~~~
gbrindisi
Buzzword bingo.

------
evolve2k
For me spending weeks and months of valuable time achieving a utopian logo
would be the greater waste. I personally am very supportive of this let's get
everyone we need to in the room and lets get it done approach. It bodes well
for how MM might go about solving larger issues facing the company.

------
dnyanesh
If Marissa Mayer hadn't mentioned about the time taken to design the logo,
this post wouldn't exist.

------
jrs235
I think "it's" working.

"Negative" publicity is better than no publicity.

Look at us! We're talking about Yahoo! now.

EDIT: My point being: perhaps it's not about their logo or the importance of a
logo and many of you aren't seeing the bigger picture/goal/objective...

------
jpswade
What the writer fails to notice is that the reason there is a lack of
technicalities surrounding the logo is that it's clearly an emotional
decision, not a logical one.

------
5teev
Historical note about the logo illustration at the top of the essay (which
predates the well-known red logo): it was internally referred to as "Uncle
Stinky".

------
antidaily
Did eBay's new logo get this criticized? Because it's infinitely worse. Then
again, the CEO probably didnt work on i, which seems to be the major gripe.

------
devanti
it's simple. yahoo's new logo is just bad. it's exactly what too much thought
and group think does.

the logo isn't even aligned properly on their homepage

------
VeejayRampay
I think the logo looks awful. It looked awful in the first place anyway but
it's well recognized and branded so I guess it doesn't matter much.

------
Kurinys
I like the fact that you argue the point that yahoo's brand is or is not:
(insert completely meaningless addwords)

------
pejer
I bet this is just a hoax and when the rage is at its peak, the real logo will
be revealed.

TADA!

We ARE a whimsical company, yay for fooling all of you!

------
secstate
There's gotta be some law of marketing at work here ... yahoo is the pepsi to
google's coke ;-)

------
progx
What is better?

Write about an own Logo or write a monstrous post about someone, who write
about her own Logo ;-)

------
GBiT
Twitter for its first logo paid 15$

------
dedsm
so, the whole logo is bad because Yahoo didn't pay millions of dollars on it?

------
pagekicker
Great post and spot-on.

------
sidcool
Wow, someone got pissed!

------
coldpie
Hang on, hang on.

People still visit Yahoo?

~~~
elliottcarlson
[http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/8/comSc...](http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/8/comScore_Media_Metrix_Ranks_Top_50_U.S._Web_Properties_for_July_2013)

