Survata Tests Yahoo’s 30 Logos

I agree design language matters - don't take me as anti-designer. I believe that this article severely and massively overstates it, though. Effective design hints at the intended message (sometimes, though as you get more iconic this design message becomes more and more abstract), it does not build the brand.

Take Whole Foods as an example - the typography, colors, and accents on the logo all refer to a desired corporate identity, but it would IMO be severely overstating the case to say that this is the embodiment of the company's brand, as the article seems to be claiming for Yahoo. The logo is but one tiny part of a huge puzzle, the vast majority of which lies firmly in the realm of marketing and branding.

Honestly, IMO Yahoo could change their logo to nearly any of the crazy options that they played with, and their brand would not be measurably worse off (or better off). Once you move away from "Bob's Burger Palace" with a giant neon burger for a logo, you're getting into territory where the perceptual impact of your logo becomes more and more esoteric, hard to measure, and subtle. I sincerely doubt anyone looks at the Yahoo logo and goes "those disjoint serif letter sure sound like a fun and dynamic website!"

There are good logos and bad logos, IMO the notion that logo design and measurably influence brand perception (especially when you get into extremely abstract logos like Yahoo, Apple, or even Google) is true, but severely overstated by some designers. It would seem to me that a successful logo is less about messaging and more about its longevity and ability to be iconic.

If you took some text and wrote it IBM-style, it would still be visibly IBM. If you took the red-yellow combination and put it on something without the arches, it would still be visibly McDonald's. The mermaid figure that represents Starbucks is so out there, and the green so consistently applied to all of its branding, that it can stand alone without the name of the company and still be instantly recognizable. Those factors are IMO far, far more important to a logo than the extremely abstract ideas and values they represent.

Well, I'm only commenting on what I think the point of the article is. On the other hand, that point is undermined by comments in this thread about what the actual intent was. If the intent was just to be playful, (like say, the episode of Doctor Who in which the Time Lady Romana tries on different "bodies" before settling on a new actress to play her) then that's not at all like the scenario I described. It's more like dying your hair a different color each day on a bet.

However, to some people, (the author specifically) it's /come off/ as the situation described. So, without really seeing more evidence, I can tentatively conclude "a swing and a miss". But I can't fault them for trying.

This was my hypothesis, too. I'm disappointed.