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Yahoo reveals its new logo

74 points| MekaiGS | 12 years ago |yahoo.tumblr.com

73 comments

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[+] cschmidt|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] brettcvz|12 years ago|reply
The bevel bothers me as well, especially dark bevel on white background.
[+] colmvp|12 years ago|reply
The bevel is pretty ugly and unnecessary.
[+] crazygringo|12 years ago|reply
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.

[+] anologwintermut|12 years ago|reply
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

[+] kordless|12 years ago|reply
I like it. It would look a wee better if you made the HOO a half a point bigger.
[+] balloot|12 years ago|reply
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!

[+] avenger123|12 years ago|reply
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.

[+] mwfunk|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] JacobSkyler|12 years ago|reply
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.

[+] untog|12 years ago|reply
Get rid of the 3D depth effect they've put on the letters, and it looks fine.
[+] Gigablah|12 years ago|reply
I don't understand why they added the bevel, it looks like WordArt :(
[+] richardjordan|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] aroman|12 years ago|reply
Agreed. Though frankly for a company in Yahoo!'s straits, it seems like almost any press is good press.
[+] ffk|12 years ago|reply
For comparison, Google's logo also has a bevel and the first letter englarged extending below the baseline.
[+] Rumudiez|12 years ago|reply
I don't believe that it's enlarged, rather most lower curves aside from Os cross the baseline, especially capital letters, in most typefaces.
[+] 40|12 years ago|reply
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.

[+] Zaheer|12 years ago|reply
The bevel only makes it look even more antiquated. At a moment like this you would think they would go for a 'fresher' look.
[+] plainOldText|12 years ago|reply
No offense, but it looks like shit! The letters are too thin and don't have beautiful proportions.
[+] packetslave|12 years ago|reply
Ever notice how, when someone starts a sentence with "no offense, but...", the very next thing they say/write tends to be really offensive?
[+] redler|12 years ago|reply
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.

[+] sirmarksalot|12 years ago|reply
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.

[+] tomflack|12 years ago|reply
How long until their regional affiliates update their design? For example:

http://au.yahoo.com (Yahoo! 7) 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.

[+] ssivark|12 years ago|reply
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.

[+] kjjj333asf|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] avenger123|12 years ago|reply
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.