This is a brilliant move by Marissa Mayer. She knows from experience that having the best of the best (not only in engineering- but also in design, marketing, etc.) is necessary for your success in tech. Large tech companies depend on their employee's pet ideas and projects, the fact that they might be well known in some niche for some open source project or blog, and so on. In a way, if you're a large company that needs to constantly be on top of the latest trends and technologies (because if you're not, the same thing happens to you as happened to Myspace), you're no different than YCombinator - except that instead of wanting your recruits to start their startup, you want them to run a project for you internally (all of the famous Google projects that originated from 20% projects could have easily been startups of their own).
Through these actions and posts, shes's showing how cool and fun Yahoo! is. Look, the CEO works on weekends with a small skunkworks team on designing logos, and nerds out on the subtle details like any cool designer would do.
This is all about making Yahoo! a desirable place to work at again. I'm receiving way more emails from Yahoo! recruiters these days than Google or Apple recruiters, and they all have a common tone: "check us out, we're fun!".
Similarly, all the small startup acquisitions have 2 goals: poach for talent, and get Techcrunch, HN, Engadget, etc. to talk about Yahoo. (the big acquisition we all talked about was about receiving a mature project internally as a way to make up for lost time)
Of course it's not just this that will bring Yahoo! to victory, but those little things show how much strategy there is in Mayer's execution.
EDIT: finally was in a situation where I could watch the video, and I only feel stronger about my point. Listen to the music (some dubstep/ibiza dance/feel good summer hit hybrid) - this is clearly destined to appeal to the 21 year old Stanford student looking for a new job, not the guy on HN who will criticize anything that makes it to the front page.
Her experience and micromanagement apparently produced a logo that looks like it belongs on a web portal framed by IE6's forward thinking UI and appears to have been designed by someone who just figured out that illustrator could do 3d effects.
So, so much for making users think the company has moved beyond its stagnant products. Which in a lot of ways it has, look at the Yahoo weather app for Android, the design is modern and integrates one of Yahoo's rather under leveraged properties: flickr. That was nice design.
As to signals to the best of the best, this blog post confirms both that she will micro manager you and do design by committee simultaneously (a dubious distinction I don't think even Steve Balmer could achieve). And that's the signal if they like the logo.
I couldn't disagree more. To me, the new logo screams "design by committee". Its only virtue is that it addresses the worst flaws of the old logo. If we are to believe that how a company treats its logo is a reflection how it acts in all other regards (dubious at best), this would signal to a potential employee that Yahoo is an overly-cautious company that rejects big-picture rethinking and will only take on incremental adjustments to the status quo. A place where you cannot do your best work because you need to get buy in from 15 stakeholders for any significant change, and mediocre work that doesn't step on anyone's toes is the path to success.
Me, I think that a logo is just a logo, and that a logo (and even a logo design process) is almost completely orthogonal to a company's ability to recruit and retain talent.
> Through these actions and posts, shes's showing how cool and fun Yahoo! is. Look, the CEO works on weekends with a small skunkworks team on designing logos, and nerds out on the subtle details like any cool designer would do.
Through these actions and posts, she looks like someone I wouldn't want to work with, or for.
I avoid people who claim "I am not X, but I know enough to be dangerous" like the plague they are. I've had my share of "I am not an engineer, but I know enough to be dangerous"; they're the people who think you used two decoupling caps in parallel because you couldn't find one with the right value, or who are always there to help you with an obvious and useless tip when you're debugging a program -- and then you spend five minutes explaining them why they're not even close to the problem (partly because they used some words that mean something different than what they thought they mean). And take another fifteen to gather back your focus, as a bonus.
Second, if I had some work to do, the last thing I'd want is the CEO in my room. Yahoo looks like a big company, don't they have some CEO-ing to do? When you decide you want to make a career out of pushing papers and borderline lying to investors, stick to it.
Third, having the CEO bug you and working weekends is a really low, indecent form of manipulation. Someone who's designs stuff for Yahoo is probably experienced enough to have gone past the "I have to work weekends to impress my boss and jumpstart my career" phase. The dudes probably had families to spend time with (or bars to hit and get drunk over the grudge of their loneliness, whatever). Let them go home, you can brag to the press about what a workaholic culture your company has without actually keeping your employees at work over the weekend.
Sure, if the atmosphere is fun enough, it may seem like you're having fun and playing, but this doesn't avoid the burnout, it just makes its settling less painful.
> finally was in a situation where I could watch the video, and I only feel stronger about my point. Listen to the music (some dubstep/ibiza dance/feel good summer hit hybrid) - this is clearly destined to appeal to the 21 year old Stanford student looking for a new job, not the guy on HN who will criticize anything that makes it to the front page.
This is clearly destined to appeal to the ambitious, 21-year hipster who wants to be a corporate drone but with style, you know, like he's not a corporate drone. Job-desperate, loan-starved young graduates who want to subscribe to the 70 hours a week -- but oh so fun -- culture.
I don't think they are to be condemned (we were all pretty stupid when we were 21), but someone who perpetuates this culture isn't to be admired and certainly not made an example of, not among tech professionals anyway. Among Wall Street investors? Sure, who the hell wouldn't admire someone who can make people work over weekends and proud of it.
Also -- at the risk of doing a sexist no-no -- I can't help but wonder how someone like, say, Steve Ballmer, which I guess no one around here wants to do, would have been treated if he were the one treating his employees like this -- micromanaging exactly the people you shouldn't micromanage (i.e. the creative team), over a weekend, then bragging about how hip it is.
Breathing life into a company is a difficult task, and Marissa Mayer seems to be trying to do exactly that. Initial success is obviously to be applauded, but don't be overly enthusiastic. The smith's fire will eat through the coals and make the iron unworkable if you overwork the bellows.
Unfortunately, to me her post says different things:
* "I work on weekends." (With a hint of "Just saying...").
* Designed in only two days.
* This was personal. Talking about her love for design and "most of all" Illustrator (!?) says "It's at least partly about me."
* Mixed messages. "We didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo." -- yet the logo ended up with a ton of essentially straight lines.
And worst of all, the new logo seems to throw out too much of the old brand, misunderstand modern design trends and logo portability (logos with depth still need to be interesting when flat), and try too hard to have weight and impact without really achieving it. For example, the saturation of the purple has been pumped up till it almost hurts your eyes. Like TV sets at Best Buy, it's attention grabbing, but it's not desirable in the long term.
In some ways, but I think Yahoo! has essentially proven their brand is so weak that it can be represented by a new poorly thought out design every day and, well, no-one cares.
If Apple, McDonald's or Coca Cola did something similar, they'd be committing brand suicide and attracting a lot of flak, but with Yahoo it's just "Oh well, another new Yahoo logo, who cares?"
> She knows from experience that having the best of the best is necessary for your success in tech
This is simply not true. There is a metric ton of examples of "success in tech" WITHOUT "having the best of the best". Microsoft would be the prime example. Twitter - another.
I couldn't agree more. What I feel a lot of people are missing here is that Marissa's making Yahoo a place where good engineers want to work: where empowered smart people can make a difference in a scrappy way.
1. Showing hand-drawn versions of your logo in what clearly is set in hardly-modified Optima (a typeface designed way back in the 1950s) makes me cringe. Why show fake process work?
2. No one is impressed when the manager does the job of their employees. For one, it implies that they don't trust their employees, and secondly, it makes the job of designers look like a fun hobby that anyone can get into. The result is exactly what happened here: an utterly boring logo redesign that looks just-polished-enough to make people think that Marissa Mayer is some kind of genius, yet simple enough to make people think that true designers bring no value to the table.
3. The whole 30 days of logos schtick was awful. Good artists know that the worst thing you can do for yourself is show too much of your own work. After a while, everything looks same-y and the weaknesses begin to become more apparent. The whole concept reeks of indecision and a pray-to-God moment that one of the logos would have such a huge outpouring of support that the Yahoo! team wouldn't have to make up their own minds on a vision.
4. The bevel isn't even customized. It's a preset Adobe effect. Pretending like the Y shape in the bevel was intentional is horseshit and obviously a desperate attempt to give some sort of conceptual significance to what is otherwise a completely forgettable design.
Totally right. That's why the design by consensus is always wrong. The brand is now biased. MM had a reputation of being intrusive even on silly details making the design process horrible and with crappy results.
From this I remember various things you may remember too:
1. The Google favicon. They did thousands and the one they choosed was crappiest one. They had to change it later.
2. The Google favicon with blue. Also, they did silly tests. Now that thing is gone.
I've been trying to evaluate this logo under the assumption that the people who are working at Yahoo are smarter than me and have more information than me.
My personal reaction is that I hate the bevel. Hate. I was rooting for #10, which is a simplified and modernized version of their old logo.
But. I'm not a Yahoo user. Period.
The bevel immediately made me think of some brands you'd find on sale at Macy's, which mainstream America associates with quality, but which my artisanal-y brainwashed brain thinks of as mass produced junk.
Imagine for a second that Yahoo has research showing normal people reacting to this logo with words like luxury and high-class.
If that's the case, then Yahoo just pulled an epic branding end run. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are fighting to be the flattest, plainest, more boring brands. Then Yahoo stepped up and said, "Yo. Let's be fabulous together!"
In the old days, Yahoo's skunkworks Brickhouse division had posters in their break room titled "Know your competition" with pictures of Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin. Trying to copy the other tech giants was (one of) Yahoo's problems because the Yahoo teams couldn't celebrate what they were actually doing well.
The contrarian in me salutes Yahoo for this crazy, out of left field, gaudy, off-trend logo. Genius.
I was rooting for #10 as well. The selected logo looks... cheap. When you can see the bevels they're distracting, but at typical resolutions (as on the home page) they get anti-aliased out leaving the edges of the letters looking fuzzy. You end up with an image that looks like it was improperly scaled.
I'm astounded they didn't hire an agency for this. Updating the logo for a major brand is incredibly specialized work and not something for which in-house talent is typically suited. They're too close to the brand to be objective and with an agency the power dynamic is better - they can fire the client if they're being dumb. I'm a fan of Marissa, but she should leave font and logo design to the pros.
> The bevel immediately made me think of some brands you'd find on sale at Macy's, which mainstream America associates with quality, but which my artisanal-y brainwashed brain thinks of as mass produced junk.
The only thing I can come up with is that someone, probably Mayer, thinks it's a hipster cool throwback to the late '90s when everyone was using Photoshop's default bevel and emboss filters like there was no tomorrow.
I feel like, if Meyer had been at this ten years ago, Yahoo would have just finished purchasing MySpace--Tumblr is just the modern-day equivalent. It's that kind of aesthetic, and that kind of audience, that they're reaching for here. (Meyer's own blog theme is a great example!)
For what it's worth, I like the bevel, because (probably due to the darkness of the colors involved) it somehow manages to be almost invisible at default zoom - if I just go to http://www.yahoo.com and look at the logo, even on a Retina display, it seems almost flat, with just a hint of varying color to spice it up. It's only when I look closely that the true depth is revealed. This adds visual interest... or I may just be blind. :)
I'd like to point out, for the record, that this "logo design team" consisted of:
- CEO
- SVP of "Brand Creative"
- VP, Creative Director
- Someone who doesn't seem to exist online, outside of articles about this new logo
- An intern
You'll notice a distinct lack of professional designers in that list. Apparently this 10 billion dollar brand wasn't important enough to put in the hands of, you know, experts. Instead, they spent a weekend (ONE WEEKEND) "geeking out" over it. Which is definitely the best way to design a global brand.
This is micromanagement at its very worst, and is an insult to the craft of design.
Hmmm, while I agree with the sentiment, I don't think it's as simple as putting it in the hands of a "professional".
Simply picking the right designer is something that requires an inordinate amount of taste to start with. People with no taste or feel for design stand a strong chance of picking a poor designer (or agency).
I'll cite Wolf Olins here as my example. Not only is it clear that no one in Wolf Olins seems to have taste or a feel for design, their clients don't seem to have it either. So there's a feedback loop of affirmation as people with no taste reward other people with no taste, which in turns makes other people with no taste think those other people with no taste have taste because all the people they know that they think have taste think those other people have taste.
Meanwhile, the actual people with taste are watching from the sidelines, because they've marginalised themselves by being honest about what is good design and what is bad design, but with a passion that comes across as pedantry and rudeness. So they watch in despair as the whole debacle unfolds in front of them, growing ever more frustrated which serves only to marginalise them even more.
While I'm here... I think almost everything Wolf Olins churns out is sub-stadard slop barely worthy of a fist year national diploma students portfolio. Their work has neither grace, finesse, or charm. It's all cack-handed indulgent arse-gravy of the highest order dipped in a seemingly bottomless ocean of post-rationalisation and I can not believe that people keep lapping it up. It's rank amateur. Their work stinks like shit and I hate them for it.
And there I go, proving my point about why no-one listens to designers.
It looks like a logo that I would create. My logo creation technique involves typing out the brand name, then selecting whichever stock font installed on my machine most strikes my fancy.
Perhaps the ratios of the bevels and font size contain some hilarious, hidden inside joke for mathematicians which I do not understand.
> We didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo. Straight lines don’t exist in the human form and are extremely rare in nature, so the human touch in the logo is that all the lines and forms all have at least a slight curve.
This reminds me of the design team that tilted the Pepsi logo 10 degrees to show Pepsi was "leaning towards the future." [1]
Is there a rule that says you can't run a company if you see through these sort of lines as utterly laughable?
Well done - for a multi billion dollar company, spending a weekend on your logo is about the right ratio of time to value. Looks good enough to be acceptable, can be reused in all the sub projects. Done, now lets get on with real product improvements.
The main problem with this logo is that it sends conflicting messages. On one hand it wants to be funky (differently sized letters, tilted exclamation mark), but on the other it oozes conservative, with its square and straight typeface and lack of color. Overall, 'conservative' clearly beats out 'funky', with the few creative touches clobbered into submission. The larger Y and O, supposed to add dynamism and 'fun', are not different enough to pop and convey that idea. This is particularly jarring with the larger O next to the smaller one at the end - only different enough to confuse, not to send a message.
What's worse is the execution is poor and sloppy. It has no synergy. Notice the horizontal lines in the A and the H at strange 'close-but-not-equal' levels, neither tying into anything else in the logo. The flat foot of the larger Y sets one baseline, but the flat feet of the A and H define another, neither being referenced anywhere else in the logo.
Perhaps I just don't get it. Maybe the amateurism of it is the message, in which case it comes through loud and clear.
And yet, Neal Stephenson made an interesting distinction between "geeking out" and "vegging out":
"To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal - and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means."
Geeking out is a bit of a strange phrase to use with the logo. One can geek out on the details of the design, but the big problem (for me) with the logo aren't the details, it's the emotion.
While I'm sure I'll get used to the new design, it leaves me emotionally empty. I very much preferred the old one.
This might be contrary to what a lot of people here are saying -- I'm not sure adding a professional designer to the group would have made a difference.
You need to add the right designer. Not all designers are equipped to work in those situations, i.e., one who can deal with the huge personalities and egos of those on the redesign committee. And the worst egos in the room aren't always the CEO, they can often be the creative director types.
Other than GuiA's (currently-on-top) comment, almost everything I've read here is disgustingly negative.
"She's a micromanager, she should be 'CEOing' instead of designing, she's a terrible designer, she should spend time with her kids (!!), she has hubris to say she can design something, it's all about her, she's destroying the craft of design, the wafts of Denning - Krugerism are pluming out."
You can justify almost anything in design, it's so subjective and the person who gets paid the most always has the final say on what's "right" (except for a few unicorns that allow they're designers ultimte freedom)
This seems to be really well intended, but this is the outcome when you put a data-geek into charge of design instead of a true artist.
If they had just launched a design contest on a freelancer, they would have had a multiple times better results. Why not try a golden-yellow "Y" on a blue background for instance. Think different, play with the colors.
Design has to come from the heart and really reflect the personality of the company and show the LOVE! This yahoo logo still looks very stoic and still like from the 90s, urgs.
Designing is simply not a data-driven approach, it is the complete opposite.
Other design jobs for Yahoo properties? Or maybe they weren't part of the team beforehand? It's not like designers just sit there doing one thing forever.
Design by consensus = bad, really bad. If the CEO wears the designer boot and conditions the final art I think it's one of the biggest mistakes they will do. Right now, that logo to me looks like more or less those logos you can find on logotypes websites for 30 dollars.
The logo on smaller sizes looks pretty crap. Just check it. The logo is only interesting on certain situations, that's why a good logo isn't just drop some non-straight lines in illustrator on a weekend.
The pure typeface design is truely amazing and beautiful. The bevel and depth completely ruin the entire logo though. Yahoo should have gone with a flat design and a solid fill of their trademark purple color and called it quits.
Love the boldness. Going against flat is bold - and ugly.
It reminds me of a book I had in the 90s which showed 5-click Photoshop tricks, there was a golden bevel trick in there (and marble, and shadows, and stamping).
So, yeah, with all of this media around the new Yahoo I decided to attempt to re-embrace Flickr as a place to host photos. My old Yahoo email address account was long since gone, so I tried to sign up for a new account. On entering my Google Voice phone number (which I use as my official number everywhere, because it makes it way easier for me to switch carriers without worrying about number porting) as my mobile number their verification routine informed me it wasn't a valid mobile number... STRIKE 1.
So I get past that by entering my current actual cellphone number (which, again, I consider 'unofficial' since it may change 6 months or a year from now whereas my Google Voice number will not), which I had to go look up because I did not even know what it was... Annoying to have to do that, but not the end of the world.
I start uploading a set of 70 full sized photos to my first 'set' on Flickr over my not-so-fast DSL line. About an hour in to the upload, flickr informs me my login has timed out and the upload can't continue. Worse, not only did my overall upload not complete, but NONE of the photos in that upload show in my account despite the fact that the overall upload was about 50% done. STRIKE 2 through 71.
Yeah, nice-ish logo, even with the bevels, but until Yahoo fixes their shit, who cares? My impression of the company is actually much worse now than it was a couple hours ago when I was pretty much neutral on them. Needless to say my flickr experiment is over and I'm not likely to be signing up for any Yahoo services anytime soon.
[+] [-] GuiA|12 years ago|reply
Through these actions and posts, shes's showing how cool and fun Yahoo! is. Look, the CEO works on weekends with a small skunkworks team on designing logos, and nerds out on the subtle details like any cool designer would do.
This is all about making Yahoo! a desirable place to work at again. I'm receiving way more emails from Yahoo! recruiters these days than Google or Apple recruiters, and they all have a common tone: "check us out, we're fun!".
Similarly, all the small startup acquisitions have 2 goals: poach for talent, and get Techcrunch, HN, Engadget, etc. to talk about Yahoo. (the big acquisition we all talked about was about receiving a mature project internally as a way to make up for lost time)
Of course it's not just this that will bring Yahoo! to victory, but those little things show how much strategy there is in Mayer's execution.
EDIT: finally was in a situation where I could watch the video, and I only feel stronger about my point. Listen to the music (some dubstep/ibiza dance/feel good summer hit hybrid) - this is clearly destined to appeal to the 21 year old Stanford student looking for a new job, not the guy on HN who will criticize anything that makes it to the front page.
[+] [-] anologwintermut|12 years ago|reply
So, so much for making users think the company has moved beyond its stagnant products. Which in a lot of ways it has, look at the Yahoo weather app for Android, the design is modern and integrates one of Yahoo's rather under leveraged properties: flickr. That was nice design.
As to signals to the best of the best, this blog post confirms both that she will micro manager you and do design by committee simultaneously (a dubious distinction I don't think even Steve Balmer could achieve). And that's the signal if they like the logo.
[+] [-] stephencanon|12 years ago|reply
Me, I think that a logo is just a logo, and that a logo (and even a logo design process) is almost completely orthogonal to a company's ability to recruit and retain talent.
[+] [-] weland|12 years ago|reply
> Through these actions and posts, shes's showing how cool and fun Yahoo! is. Look, the CEO works on weekends with a small skunkworks team on designing logos, and nerds out on the subtle details like any cool designer would do.
Through these actions and posts, she looks like someone I wouldn't want to work with, or for.
I avoid people who claim "I am not X, but I know enough to be dangerous" like the plague they are. I've had my share of "I am not an engineer, but I know enough to be dangerous"; they're the people who think you used two decoupling caps in parallel because you couldn't find one with the right value, or who are always there to help you with an obvious and useless tip when you're debugging a program -- and then you spend five minutes explaining them why they're not even close to the problem (partly because they used some words that mean something different than what they thought they mean). And take another fifteen to gather back your focus, as a bonus.
Second, if I had some work to do, the last thing I'd want is the CEO in my room. Yahoo looks like a big company, don't they have some CEO-ing to do? When you decide you want to make a career out of pushing papers and borderline lying to investors, stick to it.
Third, having the CEO bug you and working weekends is a really low, indecent form of manipulation. Someone who's designs stuff for Yahoo is probably experienced enough to have gone past the "I have to work weekends to impress my boss and jumpstart my career" phase. The dudes probably had families to spend time with (or bars to hit and get drunk over the grudge of their loneliness, whatever). Let them go home, you can brag to the press about what a workaholic culture your company has without actually keeping your employees at work over the weekend.
Sure, if the atmosphere is fun enough, it may seem like you're having fun and playing, but this doesn't avoid the burnout, it just makes its settling less painful.
> finally was in a situation where I could watch the video, and I only feel stronger about my point. Listen to the music (some dubstep/ibiza dance/feel good summer hit hybrid) - this is clearly destined to appeal to the 21 year old Stanford student looking for a new job, not the guy on HN who will criticize anything that makes it to the front page.
This is clearly destined to appeal to the ambitious, 21-year hipster who wants to be a corporate drone but with style, you know, like he's not a corporate drone. Job-desperate, loan-starved young graduates who want to subscribe to the 70 hours a week -- but oh so fun -- culture.
I don't think they are to be condemned (we were all pretty stupid when we were 21), but someone who perpetuates this culture isn't to be admired and certainly not made an example of, not among tech professionals anyway. Among Wall Street investors? Sure, who the hell wouldn't admire someone who can make people work over weekends and proud of it.
Also -- at the risk of doing a sexist no-no -- I can't help but wonder how someone like, say, Steve Ballmer, which I guess no one around here wants to do, would have been treated if he were the one treating his employees like this -- micromanaging exactly the people you shouldn't micromanage (i.e. the creative team), over a weekend, then bragging about how hip it is.
Breathing life into a company is a difficult task, and Marissa Mayer seems to be trying to do exactly that. Initial success is obviously to be applauded, but don't be overly enthusiastic. The smith's fire will eat through the coals and make the iron unworkable if you overwork the bellows.
[+] [-] chavesn|12 years ago|reply
* "I work on weekends." (With a hint of "Just saying...").
* Designed in only two days.
* This was personal. Talking about her love for design and "most of all" Illustrator (!?) says "It's at least partly about me."
* Mixed messages. "We didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo." -- yet the logo ended up with a ton of essentially straight lines.
And worst of all, the new logo seems to throw out too much of the old brand, misunderstand modern design trends and logo portability (logos with depth still need to be interesting when flat), and try too hard to have weight and impact without really achieving it. For example, the saturation of the purple has been pumped up till it almost hurts your eyes. Like TV sets at Best Buy, it's attention grabbing, but it's not desirable in the long term.
[+] [-] petercooper|12 years ago|reply
In some ways, but I think Yahoo! has essentially proven their brand is so weak that it can be represented by a new poorly thought out design every day and, well, no-one cares.
If Apple, McDonald's or Coca Cola did something similar, they'd be committing brand suicide and attracting a lot of flak, but with Yahoo it's just "Oh well, another new Yahoo logo, who cares?"
[+] [-] huhtenberg|12 years ago|reply
This is simply not true. There is a metric ton of examples of "success in tech" WITHOUT "having the best of the best". Microsoft would be the prime example. Twitter - another.
[+] [-] Okvivi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmrfrmrf|12 years ago|reply
1. Showing hand-drawn versions of your logo in what clearly is set in hardly-modified Optima (a typeface designed way back in the 1950s) makes me cringe. Why show fake process work?
2. No one is impressed when the manager does the job of their employees. For one, it implies that they don't trust their employees, and secondly, it makes the job of designers look like a fun hobby that anyone can get into. The result is exactly what happened here: an utterly boring logo redesign that looks just-polished-enough to make people think that Marissa Mayer is some kind of genius, yet simple enough to make people think that true designers bring no value to the table.
3. The whole 30 days of logos schtick was awful. Good artists know that the worst thing you can do for yourself is show too much of your own work. After a while, everything looks same-y and the weaknesses begin to become more apparent. The whole concept reeks of indecision and a pray-to-God moment that one of the logos would have such a huge outpouring of support that the Yahoo! team wouldn't have to make up their own minds on a vision.
4. The bevel isn't even customized. It's a preset Adobe effect. Pretending like the Y shape in the bevel was intentional is horseshit and obviously a desperate attempt to give some sort of conceptual significance to what is otherwise a completely forgettable design.
[+] [-] meerita|12 years ago|reply
From this I remember various things you may remember too:
1. The Google favicon. They did thousands and the one they choosed was crappiest one. They had to change it later. 2. The Google favicon with blue. Also, they did silly tests. Now that thing is gone.
I think this post resumes it well http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
[+] [-] tonystubblebine|12 years ago|reply
My personal reaction is that I hate the bevel. Hate. I was rooting for #10, which is a simplified and modernized version of their old logo.
But. I'm not a Yahoo user. Period.
The bevel immediately made me think of some brands you'd find on sale at Macy's, which mainstream America associates with quality, but which my artisanal-y brainwashed brain thinks of as mass produced junk.
Imagine for a second that Yahoo has research showing normal people reacting to this logo with words like luxury and high-class.
If that's the case, then Yahoo just pulled an epic branding end run. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are fighting to be the flattest, plainest, more boring brands. Then Yahoo stepped up and said, "Yo. Let's be fabulous together!"
In the old days, Yahoo's skunkworks Brickhouse division had posters in their break room titled "Know your competition" with pictures of Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin. Trying to copy the other tech giants was (one of) Yahoo's problems because the Yahoo teams couldn't celebrate what they were actually doing well.
The contrarian in me salutes Yahoo for this crazy, out of left field, gaudy, off-trend logo. Genius.
[+] [-] dpe82|12 years ago|reply
I'm astounded they didn't hire an agency for this. Updating the logo for a major brand is incredibly specialized work and not something for which in-house talent is typically suited. They're too close to the brand to be objective and with an agency the power dynamic is better - they can fire the client if they're being dumb. I'm a fan of Marissa, but she should leave font and logo design to the pros.
[+] [-] bowlofpetunias|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philwelch|12 years ago|reply
Sounds like Yahoo's market positioning to me.
[+] [-] avb|12 years ago|reply
The only thing I can come up with is that someone, probably Mayer, thinks it's a hipster cool throwback to the late '90s when everyone was using Photoshop's default bevel and emboss filters like there was no tomorrow.
[+] [-] derefr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comex|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] samuelfine|12 years ago|reply
- CEO
- SVP of "Brand Creative"
- VP, Creative Director
- Someone who doesn't seem to exist online, outside of articles about this new logo
- An intern
You'll notice a distinct lack of professional designers in that list. Apparently this 10 billion dollar brand wasn't important enough to put in the hands of, you know, experts. Instead, they spent a weekend (ONE WEEKEND) "geeking out" over it. Which is definitely the best way to design a global brand.
This is micromanagement at its very worst, and is an insult to the craft of design.
[+] [-] tomelders|12 years ago|reply
Simply picking the right designer is something that requires an inordinate amount of taste to start with. People with no taste or feel for design stand a strong chance of picking a poor designer (or agency).
I'll cite Wolf Olins here as my example. Not only is it clear that no one in Wolf Olins seems to have taste or a feel for design, their clients don't seem to have it either. So there's a feedback loop of affirmation as people with no taste reward other people with no taste, which in turns makes other people with no taste think those other people with no taste have taste because all the people they know that they think have taste think those other people have taste.
Meanwhile, the actual people with taste are watching from the sidelines, because they've marginalised themselves by being honest about what is good design and what is bad design, but with a passion that comes across as pedantry and rudeness. So they watch in despair as the whole debacle unfolds in front of them, growing ever more frustrated which serves only to marginalise them even more.
While I'm here... I think almost everything Wolf Olins churns out is sub-stadard slop barely worthy of a fist year national diploma students portfolio. Their work has neither grace, finesse, or charm. It's all cack-handed indulgent arse-gravy of the highest order dipped in a seemingly bottomless ocean of post-rationalisation and I can not believe that people keep lapping it up. It's rank amateur. Their work stinks like shit and I hate them for it.
And there I go, proving my point about why no-one listens to designers.
[+] [-] gersonaya|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vacri|12 years ago|reply
... and I actually laughed when I read "Our last move was to tilt the exclamation point by 9 degrees, just to add a bit of whimsy".
[+] [-] jakejake|12 years ago|reply
Perhaps the ratios of the bevels and font size contain some hilarious, hidden inside joke for mathematicians which I do not understand.
[+] [-] brownbat|12 years ago|reply
This reminds me of the design team that tilted the Pepsi logo 10 degrees to show Pepsi was "leaning towards the future." [1]
Is there a rule that says you can't run a company if you see through these sort of lines as utterly laughable?
1. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42740470/pepsis-nonse...
[+] [-] marknutter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterjs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|12 years ago|reply
Move on folks, nothing exciting to see here
[+] [-] sfjailbird|12 years ago|reply
What's worse is the execution is poor and sloppy. It has no synergy. Notice the horizontal lines in the A and the H at strange 'close-but-not-equal' levels, neither tying into anything else in the logo. The flat foot of the larger Y sets one baseline, but the flat feet of the A and H define another, neither being referenced anywhere else in the logo.
Perhaps I just don't get it. Maybe the amateurism of it is the message, in which case it comes through loud and clear.
[+] [-] easytiger|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saint-loup|12 years ago|reply
"To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal - and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?...
[+] [-] mason240|12 years ago|reply
If you are a geek or nerd, you just are. You don't have to convince other people of it.
[+] [-] slantyyz|12 years ago|reply
While I'm sure I'll get used to the new design, it leaves me emotionally empty. I very much preferred the old one.
This might be contrary to what a lot of people here are saying -- I'm not sure adding a professional designer to the group would have made a difference.
You need to add the right designer. Not all designers are equipped to work in those situations, i.e., one who can deal with the huge personalities and egos of those on the redesign committee. And the worst egos in the room aren't always the CEO, they can often be the creative director types.
[+] [-] ricardobeat|12 years ago|reply
Minor nitpick: the logo is looking like a 1-bit alpha GIF on Chrome, due to the downsizing: http://cl.ly/image/183U1t0l1u3e (FF on the left)
[+] [-] tomelders|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bernardom|12 years ago|reply
"She's a micromanager, she should be 'CEOing' instead of designing, she's a terrible designer, she should spend time with her kids (!!), she has hubris to say she can design something, it's all about her, she's destroying the craft of design, the wafts of Denning - Krugerism are pluming out."
I just... come on, people!
[+] [-] usaphp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LAMike|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wellboy|12 years ago|reply
If they had just launched a design contest on a freelancer, they would have had a multiple times better results. Why not try a golden-yellow "Y" on a blue background for instance. Think different, play with the colors.
Design has to come from the heart and really reflect the personality of the company and show the LOVE! This yahoo logo still looks very stoic and still like from the 90s, urgs.
Designing is simply not a data-driven approach, it is the complete opposite.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ngoel36|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgingahead|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colmvp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randyrand|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pearjuice|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meerita|12 years ago|reply
The logo on smaller sizes looks pretty crap. Just check it. The logo is only interesting on certain situations, that's why a good logo isn't just drop some non-straight lines in illustrator on a weekend.
Bezels? That's so 90's.
[+] [-] nodesocket|12 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agRxG-X_TEQ
The pure typeface design is truely amazing and beautiful. The bevel and depth completely ruin the entire logo though. Yahoo should have gone with a flat design and a solid fill of their trademark purple color and called it quits.
[+] [-] yardie|12 years ago|reply
May I present the new Steve Jobs, everyone.
[+] [-] Uchikoma|12 years ago|reply
It reminds me of a book I had in the 90s which showed 5-click Photoshop tricks, there was a golden bevel trick in there (and marble, and shadows, and stamping).
[+] [-] georgemcbay|12 years ago|reply
So I get past that by entering my current actual cellphone number (which, again, I consider 'unofficial' since it may change 6 months or a year from now whereas my Google Voice number will not), which I had to go look up because I did not even know what it was... Annoying to have to do that, but not the end of the world.
I start uploading a set of 70 full sized photos to my first 'set' on Flickr over my not-so-fast DSL line. About an hour in to the upload, flickr informs me my login has timed out and the upload can't continue. Worse, not only did my overall upload not complete, but NONE of the photos in that upload show in my account despite the fact that the overall upload was about 50% done. STRIKE 2 through 71.
Yeah, nice-ish logo, even with the bevels, but until Yahoo fixes their shit, who cares? My impression of the company is actually much worse now than it was a couple hours ago when I was pretty much neutral on them. Needless to say my flickr experiment is over and I'm not likely to be signing up for any Yahoo services anytime soon.