Geeking Out on the Logo

#1

Post by mikkelewis » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 4:53 AM UTC

Geeking Out on the Logo
marissamayr.tumblr.com

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#2

Post by GuiA » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 5:25 AM UTC

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.

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#3

Post by tonystubblebine » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 5:38 AM UTC

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.

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#4

Post by usaphp » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 5:41 AM UTC

I like how marketing people try to come up with explanation of BS things they do...

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#5

Post by machbio » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 5:41 AM UTC

Until today, I believed Marrisa Mayer was all hype... she is a lady of attention to details - yahoo needs no other person her at this moment..

About the Logo, it seems so 90s.. normal people will be bored and you cannot explain the hyperbole's and the geometrical symmetry of the logo.. Yahoo needed a story that common man could understand - they have missed the train by designing a very technical logo.. I may be wrong, yahoo needs to attract technical people.. or I may be right with all the business happening at the consumer side.. they needed to balance - but they failed to do it..

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#6

Post by creativityland » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 5:41 AM UTC

Is it just me or her tumblr is timing out frequently with packet drops.

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#7

Post by avb » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 5:42 AM UTC

tonystubblebine wrote: post #3

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 ma…

About the bevel... I hate it too.

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.

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#8

Post by bjz_ » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 5:42 AM UTC

It's great that she's actually using tumblr. It shows that she's likes her product enough to use it herself.

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#9

Post by nl » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 5:44 AM UTC

That Yahoo! brand, as represented by their logo must be quite an asset given how it is all over their CEO's blog as well as their corporate blog[1].

Ironically their corporate blog isn't loading at the moment because http://ajax.googleapis.com isn't responding. (Edit: - seems ok now)

[1] http://yahoo.tumblr.com/

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#10

Post by stephencanon » Thu, Sep 05, 2013, 5:45 AM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #2

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 n…

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.