After working with Pentagram in the past, I can't say I'm all that impressed. Most times they tend to completely lose the concept they were trying to go after, and this is no exception to the rule. The beauty of the original hash logo was that it harkened back to the tags and IRC channel names. You can't see the hash in the new logo, and frankly, it looks like a blasted swastika.
New logo
211–220 of 259 posts
Re: New logo
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not all screens, a logo needs to work irl. The Pentagram post linked elsewhere on this story shows a couple mock-ups of irl advertising and product branding. Want T-shirts to give away at recruiting events? Your T-shirt supplier will charge more for more colors. Fewer colors also generally make a design easier to replicate freehand, and you want amateurs to be able to easily convey your logo. A special case may…
> Fewer colors also generally make a design easier to replicate freehand, and you want amateurs to be able to easily convey your logo. You don't _ever_ want people to be re-producing your logo (and especially free-handing it!). That is why they pretty much all have a "brand" page to pull assets from: https://brandfolder.com/slack/logos .
You almost always don't want your hired professionals doing freehand reproductions (there are exceptions -- a stated goal of the NASA worm was that it should be easy to freehand on NASA property), but you certainly want amateurs reproducing it in the wild. If your logo is so ubiquitous and simple that children draw it in their school books (think Nike, Pepsi, McDonalds, NASA again, etc.) then that's free advertising. This sort of non-sponsored advertising exists on a continuum, and it's usually beneficial to the signified organization.
Re: New logo
#213Before, Slack was associated with such a universal, recognizable symbol: #. The symbol was and is a part of their product as well. Now it’s just a multicolored blob. I feel like this would be equivalent to Starbucks dropping the mermaid. Then again I’m not a professional logo designer who gets paid hundreds of thousands dollars per “project”, so what do I know.
>so what do I know.
More than they do, apparently
Re: New logo
#214Marketing veteran here. Just like Uber and Instagram, they messed up big. They took something iconic and replaced it with something forgettable. The first sentece after they show it tells the lie: "Firstly, it’s not change for the sake of change." Unfortunately, due to the nature of company politics, this kind of thing usually happens because a new CMO or other exec comes in and needs to "mark their territory". Marke…
Has there ever been a case where a corporation when to a design firm, and the designers came back with "Your branding is already excellent, and we think your best bet is to not touch it"? (Call it the Miracle on 34th Street response.)
I personally know somebody who responded to a client in this way, but I don't know of any public documentation of this sort of response happening.
Re: New logo
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmmmm... yeh, but when any company starts messing with their branding, it frequently turns out to be not a good sign .
Meh, it depends. Large companies often do it. Microsoft has rebranded their visual assets a bunch of times. Doesn't seem like it was particularly ominous. Some companies in very competitive verticals are often built on their branding. Some companies do waste a lot of money on debatable rebranding efforts (Uber / HP, etc.). It's a mixed bag.
Except Microsoft's Windows logo is merely an evolution of the previous, which keeps the brand identity but refreshes the look, this one is not. The new Microsoft logo builds off of their existing brand and brands. Same for Apple, same for basically every big brand, even Google. Slack...messed up.
Re: New logo
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) It's not entirely obvious; I had to search for it. 2) It's literally a different pattern than the Nazi swastika. The shorter portions break right in the Nazi symbol, left in this image.
1) "Not entirely obvious! A great place for a dogwhistle!" I'm obviously not suggesting that whatever graphic designer intentionally slipped a Nazi symbol into Slack's new logo. But, much like the arrow in FedEx, once you see it it's hard to unsee. 2) Most people can't tell you which way the outer parts of a Nazi swastika go and which way non-Nazi swastikas go. That's what I meant about sense of rotation in my commen…
What is the point of making a 'dogwhistle' comment if you have to follow up with explaining how you're not suggesting that?
Re: New logo
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet at the same time, some of the logos in the Slack work are really bad. https://pentagram-production.imgix.net/618d5092-a542-4dae-bd... One is just colons added to the name and the wave emoji. The one beside it looks like it's from a 1997 tech company. The whole bottom row seems like it should be titled "We created these to show what not to do."
With these I always feel like they just made some shitty ones after the job was finished just for the ‘look we did a whole design and thought out of the box’ articles like these
More likely, they had a pile of shitty drafts that they cleaned up slightly for the same purpose. In a process like this, a pile of shitty drafts is pretty much a given. You're exploring a range of possibilities, and if you're too self-critical during brainstorming you might not sketch out the draft that becomes your best submittal.
Re: New logo
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, they have a pretty impressive and aesthetically pleasing portfolio: https://www.pentagram.com/work/
Paula needs to retire. She has ruined the Library of Congress logo - the classic Library of Congress logo by C&G&H with this crap: https://www.pentagram.com/work/library-of-congress/story It's like they recycled left overs from the EFF logo job. Pentagram is hit or miss depending on who leads the project. Michael Beirut is one of the better partners and designers at Pentagram.
I'm in full agreement.
like...seriously? they really thought there was improvement to be made on the Library of Congress logo? Its a book...and its nice and iconic, recognizable. They said the new design gives a brand identity thats more "accessible"...what is not accessible about a book? I get that the library has more than books, but that doesn't really make the old logo any less relevant.
Re: New logo
#219[warning: cannot be unseen] There is a swastika hiding in the negative space in the middle of the logo.
Good eye. Swastika patterns are always something to beware of when creating a pinwheel based design, whether in a logo, decoration, architecture, or even just pinwheels.
Or we could just normalize it as just another shape.
Re: New logo
#220Marketing veteran here. Just like Uber and Instagram, they messed up big. They took something iconic and replaced it with something forgettable. The first sentece after they show it tells the lie: "Firstly, it’s not change for the sake of change." Unfortunately, due to the nature of company politics, this kind of thing usually happens because a new CMO or other exec comes in and needs to "mark their territory". Marke…
There is just so much wrong here. Can anyone explain why all the 'incidental' graphics on the website are printing press related (halftone dots, mis-registered colors)? What the hell unique lineage does slack trace to the printing press? Also how does that align with the new ultra generic could be any kind of business logo. And let's not even talk about that sweet negative space swastika.
> that sweet negative space swastika.
It's not facing the same way as the Nazi one, first off, and would you also say that's a problem for Sun, or for Columbia (bikes/outdoors)?