[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.

[photorized]

It's not really about the design though. They (Yahoo) are trying to connect with people and get them engaged.

This is similar to the "design a bracket for a jet engine in 3D" campaign that GE ran - that resulted in absolutely horrible contest entries from people who do not understand materials/stress/strain/vibration... but looking visually appealing to a non-techie. I am sure GE had no intention of even considering any of those "designs" for anything other than pure entertainment.

[mnicole]

Right, but I think that most people can see right through the "look guys, we're cool! we care!" crap when it's this tacky and confusing. Quite frankly I thought they would be way more outlandish and unusable in the context of being a logo simply because of the name and the whimsicality of the current iteration. Downloading a bunch of type from Dafont does not a good logo or even fake contest make.

And here's the final they posted - http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/60332693287/introducing-our-new... - along with a now laughable quote about it from the post 30 days ago:

> The new logo will be a modern redesign that’s more reflective of our reimagined design and new experiences.