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Oxford University Press’s new logo is unfathomably bad

joukovsky.substack.com

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Re: Oxford University Press’s new logo is unfathomably bad

#71
post #49

I remember when SGI (Silicon Graphics) paid a bunch of money to rebrand to . . . drumroll . . . SGI! The consultants must have been high-fiving each other after that one landed, it's like trading in your car only to find that the saleswoman has sold you your own car back, at a profit. (SGI later collapsed due to "Corporate Campus Syndrome", and other companies, including Google, now occupy the wacky buildings they sp…

Usually a logo/rebrand change keeps the name. So no real suprise.

That said, SGI had an iconic logo of a cube formed from a single periodic pipe before. I was using SGIs daily at the time and I almost cried when they did the rebrand.

The rebrand replaced it with a contemporary (at the time, mind you) typography logo that would look outdated if the compamy still existed.

To their credit, the rebrand did include a typeface design for use with all their design, i.e. detached from the logo.

The resp. fonts would have the aforementioned issues though -- one variant was used for the logo which is kinda cheap.

But at least they had a tyepface designed and it was recognizable. That rarely happens. Commonly a rebrand will just swap the old typeface for something different but already existing.

Re: Oxford University Press’s new logo is unfathomably bad

#74

Why the redesign? What problem does this new logo solve? Isn't there anything better designers or PMs can spend their time and money on? The old logo projects quality, heritage and looking at the symbol it resembles more of a library. The new logo - doesn't fit the image of Oxford and looks like any other 'modern' Dribbble logo. This is another case of redesigning for the sake of redesigning or to stroke someone's eg…

Logos are always about ego, that’s the point. I don’t know why people expect anything else.

If you’re truly egoless, you don’t need a logo.

Re: Oxford University Press’s new logo is unfathomably bad

#76

I find it so fascinating using that people actually care about shit like this. Like when I saw the logo I had literally 0 thoughts about it. Whatever. It's a logo. Who cares. But then here's a guy who feels compelled to write a whole article about it and a thread full of people discussing it. Blows my mind. Not to demean anyone like it's cool that this matters to people I just cannot even remotely understand it.

But thats the point right?

Why pay £100k for something that doesn’t matter?

Re: Oxford University Press’s new logo is unfathomably bad

#77
post #14

I found the Met's rebrand interesting to consider. I am on the younger side/moved to New York recently. Without knowing the history of the Met logo I have always found the (new) logo fairly iconic- the stickers visitors wear, and the various paraphernalia with the logo look good to me. I find it clean and sharp. I think I actually prefer it to the old logo (which I do not remember seeing before today)

I like it because it adapted its image to its nickname. "The Metropolitan Museum of Art" is the museum's full name - embracing "The Met" formally is a nice, humanizing touch.

It confuses me. There's also the Metropolitan Opera, the Metropolitan Club, the Metropolitan Life Insurance company and probably a dozen more. At least the baseball team, the NY Mets, is plural.

Re: Oxford University Press’s new logo is unfathomably bad

#78
post #42
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple losing the rainbow from its logo? https://imgur.com/DvKPvYz

Quoted post unavailable.

Generally, no. There is a lot of backlash "around pride merchandise created and sold by companies that do nothing for queer people." [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkwashing_(LGBT)#Corporate_m...

Re: Oxford University Press’s new logo is unfathomably bad

#79
post #14

I found the Met's rebrand interesting to consider. I am on the younger side/moved to New York recently. Without knowing the history of the Met logo I have always found the (new) logo fairly iconic- the stickers visitors wear, and the various paraphernalia with the logo look good to me. I find it clean and sharp. I think I actually prefer it to the old logo (which I do not remember seeing before today)

As someone who never saw the old or the new logo before today, the old logo looks ugly and forgettable to me. If you gave me $1000 a week from now, I don’t think I can recall what organization that logo belongs to

Re: Oxford University Press’s new logo is unfathomably bad

#80
post #15

I am trying to to think of a single rebrand / new logo / new icon that I actually liked at the time—that didn't seem to signal a degradation in the integrity, quality or trustworthiness of the entity represented. (There are some cases where the new brand has grown on me, to the point that I have come to prefer it to the old one. The most recent examples I can think of are the 1999 rebrand of Northern Electric as Nort…

I'm trying to think of a rebrand that I truly hated and that led to actual decline in something. I... can't. There are plenty that I confess I don't like. But I would be struggling to put any actual significance to a label. The new street fighter one, as an example. I agree that it feels off that they are ditching the styling that they have used for literal decades. That said, I fail to see how that is at all importa…

As far as I know it was real, but Lemon Demon's take on it is some classic parody. https://youtu.be/fu3ETgAvQrw
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