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Oxford University Press’s new logo is unfathomably bad

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

#161

Post by wl »

collegeburner wrote: post #105
OJFord wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask any British person what 'The Met' is and they'll say 'London police' (or similar). I doubt an American museum could ever change that, embracing something so generic is limiting for identity & brand awareness IMO.

Ask anyone outside of Britain what "The Met" is and you'll hear about the museum. I don't think one very small country should be the primary blocker to their branding decisions.

American here. My first thought is the opera. And I've traveled to NYC just to visit the museum.

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

#162

Post by bee_rider »

FredPret wrote: post #55
elliottkember wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a tourist, I prefer the full name. I never knew what "the Met" was until know. It clearly stands for Metropolitan. But Metropolitan what? Police? Works? The full name is much more accessible and less intimidating.

Sounds like a local nickname for a train line to me.

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

#163

Post by dfxm12 »

collegeburner wrote: post #105
OJFord wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask any British person what 'The Met' is and they'll say 'London police' (or similar). I doubt an American museum could ever change that, embracing something so generic is limiting for identity & brand awareness IMO.

Ask anyone outside of Britain what "The Met" is and you'll hear about the museum. I don't think one very small country should be the primary blocker to their branding decisions.

Even in Britain, the context will clear it up straight away. Humans are, theoretically at least, very good at dealing with ambiguity. I'm hard pressed to think of a conversation where context clues wouldn't either make it abundantly clear, or prompt further questions about, which "Met" one is talking about, between a world famous art gallery and the police head quarters probably more famously known by another name.

Would this conversation ever happen?

I'm going on holiday to New York City. I'm going to the Met to check out their impressionist paintings.

Oh, they turned Scotland Yard into an art gallery now?

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

#164

Post by onetimeusename »

It looks like the old logo came from the University of Oxford's coat of arms[1] which has an ancient origin. The previous logo looks like it essentially tried to reproduce the coat of arms.

I don't know why it's assumed that having a minimalist logo means you are more capable of moving into the digital era if you read the press release about it. That is strange reasoning.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_the_University...

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

#165

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

systemicdanna wrote: post #114

An unpopular opinion: there are too many other logos that look like the original logo. Some amalgamation of Latin words and a coat of arms. It's also pretty unattractive visually (weird thickness exterior curves, all caps words with hyphens). First impression of the new logo: boring. Second impression: nice play on an open book and capital O, very clean lines, will look good in print (perhaps with some light gradient…

> An unpopular opinion: there are too many other logos that look like the original logo. Some amalgamation of Latin words and a coat of arms.

The issue is not that it’s unpopular. That’s the actual University of Oxford coat of arms. The thing is 600 years old.

Should it be changed because every institution which wants to look somewhat respectable is copying Oxford?

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

#167

Post by onetimeusename »

systemicdanna wrote: post #114

An unpopular opinion: there are too many other logos that look like the original logo. Some amalgamation of Latin words and a coat of arms. It's also pretty unattractive visually (weird thickness exterior curves, all caps words with hyphens). First impression of the new logo: boring. Second impression: nice play on an open book and capital O, very clean lines, will look good in print (perhaps with some light gradient…

a coat of arms is meant to identify someone or something. The new logo does not identify anything to me and reminds me of the James Bond intro gun barrel sequence.

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

#168

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

signatoremo wrote: post #147
OJFord wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask any British person what 'The Met' is and they'll say 'London police' (or similar). I doubt an American museum could ever change that, embracing something so generic is limiting for identity & brand awareness IMO.

London has the Underground. Something that sounds generic actually is well known to the locals and is part of the culture, the identity, the attraction of a place. Same story here.

Everyone calls it the tube there but still.

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

#170

Post by kabdib »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #99
jonathanyc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL Google occupies SGI's former headquarters. A college professor mentioned working for SGI, so I knew they existed and had importance, but I didn't realize their business had collapsed.

The workstation market got undercut by the improving performance of intel PCs with accelerators from companies like 3D Labs. There's plenty you could criticize SGI management for, but all the unix workstation vendors ended up getting pushed out by that in the end. SGI continued on for a bit selling supercomputers, as they had some multiprocessor interconnect technology that was good for its time. But that got spun ou…

SGI had some seriously cool tech that they could charge a premium for, then $300 3D graphics cards for PCs came out and ate their lunch (around the time that Windows NT was basically destroying the Unix workstation market).

I remember sneaking over to their cafeteria, from the Landings office park across the street (where I did stints at some startups). They didn't bother to check badges. I met up with a bunch of old cow-orkers from Apple and just kind of hemmed and hawed when they asked what group I was in. :-)

But the lessons are clear: Watch your competitors carefully, and don't build a stupid corporate campus because the gods simply hate that kind of hubris.

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