Similar thing has happened to Yandex.Browser in Russia: http://browser.yandex.com/
A couple of vocal geeks suggested its icon looks like underpants on a sphere and now everybody thinks about that when seeing the icon.
Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
61–70 of 115 posts
Re: Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
#62Psh, that's not even as big a logo botch as the Brits committed to themselves: the UK Office of Government Commerce unveiled -- to much tittering and whispering -- a new "OGC" logo back in 2008 which, when rotated ninety degrees clockwise, looked like a stick figure standing and, er, "'aving a wank" in the local slang.
OGC quickly reverted to its old logo, correcting the er, boner, but nevertheless in some circles (particularly Reddit), "OGC" remained for some months a sort of shorthand indicating sexual arousal.
Re: Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I spilled some coffee on some light coloured trousers on the way to the London office. The stain was centered right in my lap and I couldn't really go around like that all day, so I stopped and bought some cheap trousers at Gap to sort me out. Pro-tip: Telling your local UK colleagues that you were running late because you stained your pants and needed to get new pants, and then offering to show people the stained pa…
Ah, wonderfully divided by a common language!!!! :) "Fanny" is a great cause of transatlantic fun too. And if you are a Brit in the US, never ever say, "Im diving out for a fag". You're gonna get some odd looks.
Even better is "can I bum a fag?", which wins odd looks on both sides of the pond.
Re: Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
#64Does it really matter what 2-3% of a random sampling of people think in a single country? Could this possibly be too sensitive to trying to please too many people?
3% of the UK population = ~3m potential customers or detractors, so yes.
Re: Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
#65Psh, that's not even as big a logo botch as the Brits committed to themselves: the UK Office of Government Commerce unveiled -- to much tittering and whispering -- a new "OGC" logo back in 2008 which, when rotated ninety degrees clockwise, looked like a stick figure standing and, er, "'aving a wank" in the local slang. OGC quickly reverted to its old logo, correcting the er, boner, but nevertheless in some circles (p…
What about the London 2012 Olympics logo? That can't be undone, and it can't be unseen once you see it (ie. the Fedex logo effect not in a good way).
Re: Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
#66You don't have to be from the UK to see that that logo looks like whitey tighteys. (I'm from the US, and while the title of the article definitely solidified how I saw the logo, it still looks like men's underwear to me.)
I would suggest adding/removing more sides to the dodecahedron rather than rotating it... ("hendecahedron"? "nonahedron"?)
Re: Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
#67I would not have said pants to start with, but now its been said, all I can see is pants. [0] Maybe this is more about the power of suggestion 0. UK, where pants is pants and not trousers. ;) Edit: Also, pants is a UK way of saying rubbish. So, "that web site is a load of pants", might be said. Might be a sense of humor at work here.
> . UK, where pants is pants and not trousers. ;) I made this mistake once when I spent a summer in Ireland in high school. (I should add here that the people at this summer program were noticeably more homophobic than I was used to back home[0]) I had borrowed a pair of "trousers" from a friend for a costume for some event. When asking permission from the RA later that night to go to a different dorm after lights-ou…
Confusingly, in the north of england and in scotland, pants means trousers, just like in the US.
Re: Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
#68Best enterprise marketing blog post of the year - funny, fact-filled, self-deprecating, clever.
Re: Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
#69I don't understand the brandmark's meaning. It may as well be a swoosh
Re: Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> . UK, where pants is pants and not trousers. ;) I made this mistake once when I spent a summer in Ireland in high school. (I should add here that the people at this summer program were noticeably more homophobic than I was used to back home[0]) I had borrowed a pair of "trousers" from a friend for a costume for some event. When asking permission from the RA later that night to go to a different dorm after lights-ou…
Confusingly, in the north of england and in scotland, pants means trousers, just like in the US.
Not in any areas of the north I've lived / stayed in. the only people in England who call pants 'underpants' and trousers as 'pants' are those who watch excessive amounts of US TV shows.