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Geeking Out on the Logo

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161–168 of 168 posts

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#161

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…

Being Dutch, I associate the bevel with "American bad taste". Design is sacred here, logo design doubly so. This would be ridiculed.

The logo does not guarantee success or failure. Lots of huge companies have horrid logos...

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#162
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children are surprisingly capable of not falling over dead or turning into monsters even if their parents spend a little time pursuing other interests now and then, you know. Also, be honest: Would that thought have even occured to you if Yahoo! had a male CEO? If not, why not?

Not only do they not die or turn into monsters, but it's also an important lesson on how to explore one's interest to occupy oneself! I also wanted to mention the idea of including your children in your interests so they get to know you and spend time with you (and you get to do something you love!), but there was no good seguefor that.

Indeed! In my early childhood I had the great fortune that my parents' workplace was located next door to our family home, so I got to observe and bother them at work, as well as help out within my limited abilities (they ran a small engineering company, so e.g. folding blueprints and stuffing them into big paper envelopes). That taught me a lot of valuable lessons about life and work (perhaps not always in the moment, but it was at times useful to go back to those memories later in life, anyway), and it was great to feel a little in the loop, so it also taught me something about the value of communicating with your loved ones. If they had a rough week I would know first-hand and cut them a little slack for not having the spare capacity to deal with me being a brat :).

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#163

> 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 t…

The good (well...) news is that the curved lines can't even be seen, when the logo is shrinked :)

As a corollary, that must look unnatural and dehumanizing. :)

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#164
post #95
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 beg to differ. > 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…

When you decide you want to make a career out of pushing papers and borderline lying to investors, stick to it.

This reminds me of when I asked on HN what would be good professional management that is as general purpose as the old MBAs.

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a straight up bad design. It's the logo of a massive company, there is no room for emotion or being "bitter". They have a lot of man power, and produced this, it's sub par. It's not pleasing to the eye, it's sharp and 3d-ish. You'd get something better by throwing $500 towards 99 designs. A logo should look great on a massive banner as well as my tiny retina screen. Right now, when it's smaller, the bevels and s…

OK maybe you're right. Can you show me an objectively better one?

About 5 of the "30 days of logos" ones.

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#166
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides, branding is "CEO" type work. Branding is CEO type work. Logo design isn't. Encouraging people to put all their resources into their work is awesome. "Jumping into the trenches" (oh, over the weekend!) isn't what the CEO of a multi-billion company does, it's what an arrogant, career-oriented boss who can't delegate does to compensate for his apparent lack of sufficient involvement. Leading an agenda of tech…

"Jumping into the trenches" (oh, over the weekend!) isn't what the CEO of a multi-billion company does, it's what an arrogant, career-oriented boss who can't delegate does to compensate for his apparent lack of sufficient involvement. That's absolutely ridiculous. Plenty of CEOs carve out a little time to jump into the trenches and work on things they really care about, or work on fun things to relax and get away fro…

> That's absolutely ridiculous. Plenty of CEOs carve out a little time to jump into the trenches and work on things they really care about, or work on fun things to relax and get away from the big stuff for a little bit.

Come on, read through the lines :-).

My post isn't to be read in terms of "Marissa Mayer is an arrogant, career-oriented boss"; it's my own experience there, and should be read in terms of "I've seen people do what she did, and they were arrogant, career-oriented bosses". Correlation doesn't imply causation; for all we know, it could be that she's a talented graphic designer with exceptional leadership skills, but I have my doubts on it.

That being said, Yahoo's logo change was a big move. It's the visual spearhead of their rebranding. That's hardly a fun thing you do to relax and get away from the big stuff, so that leaves important.

Leaving management principles aside, the polite thing to do when something is really important is generally to leave it to people who are good at it and not put unneeded pressure on them. The whole stream of action reeked of manipulation -- which, as it always happens, may not have been intentional, but that doesn't make it stink any less.

I am not being intentionally thick or judgmental based on nothing but a blog post. I am relating it to my previous experience, and definitely hope I am wrong (for the sake of Yahoo's employees, if anything).

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#167
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children are surprisingly capable of not falling over dead or turning into monsters even if their parents spend a little time pursuing other interests now and then, you know. Also, be honest: Would that thought have even occured to you if Yahoo! had a male CEO? If not, why not?

The thought occurred to a lot of folks when Steve Jobs said he had a biography done "so his kids would know him". A few of them (eg. Jeff Atwood) even changed their behavior as a result.

[deleted]

Re: Geeking Out on the Logo

#168

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,…

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.

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