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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
