Survata Tests Yahoo’s 30 Logos

> This “face-off chart” in particular has all the charm of pulling out a spreadsheet on a date.

What's wrong with data? The author doesn't actually explain how it's certain that there are no metrics which could act as a reasonable proxy for the quality of a logo's "visual manifestation of all the complex ideas, values and people that fuel a company".

This seems to be a re-occurring misunderstanding. The 30 logos are not candidates. They are not potential logos. They are "our way of having some fun while honoring the legacy of our present logo" [1] and were used to get people used to the idea of change. There were horrible logos in there - pretty sure the people making them even knew that. The new logo, as it will be revealed tonight at midnight EST, will be the actual logo - everything else was tongue in cheek. It has people talking about Yahoo. It has people wondering what the actual new logo will be.

The Survata survey is a third party company making statistics for something that will give them self promotion - nothing wrong with that, but that is what it is.

[1] http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/57582020969/kicking-off-30-days...

This "church of design" approach to criticism is intense. The idea that you can't violate the sanctity of a logo by playing with it is refuted every day by Google and their doodles.

> "A logo is really a visual manifestation of all the complex ideas, values and people that fuel a company"

You lost me here.

A logo is a marketing tool. What part of the yellow and red double arches says "hamburgers"? What part of a weird green mermaid-thing says "coffee"? What part of staggered striped blue lines say... actually nevermind, that one actually does say "IBM", literally.

A logo is more frequently abstract than it is descriptive, and the more iconic you go the less they have to do with the company's business or even its people. How does an apple with a chunk taken out of it represent high-end consumer electronics?

How do concentric red circles describe "bargain department store"? How does a strange six-pointed star describe "Wal-Mart", or any of its values, products, businesses, or people? Exactly what does the iconic cursive Coca-Cola script represent? Is the flowing script supposed to represent refreshment and thirst-quenching?

A logo's primary purpose is to be immediately recognizable and indelibly associated with a brand. That brand may evoke lifestyles, ideas, values, and people - but I assure you the logo has next to no role in that. Shrewd, persistent, on-message marketing does that. In some circles Wal-Mart's brand has become associated with gross corporate abuse, representing all that is wrong with greed and capitalism - I don't believe Wal-Mart's logo had anything to do with this branding (or rather, mis-branding).

This is a tempest in a teapot. Disregarding the fact that Yahoo openly acknowledged this as more of a plaything than a serious attempt at rebranding, the logo really doesn't have that much to do with the sort of brand Yahoo wants to build for itself, or the values and ideas they seek to represent.

Google and their doodles are part of their identity. The fact that it changes, and the way it changes affects people's perception of who google is, and their fundamental philosophy and approach to things. This idea of a changing logo was pioneered by Frank Olinsky and his MTV identity work. The change is part of the logo, not a search for a new/better one.

On the other hand, "not violating the sanctity of a logo" says something else about a company. Something a company may desire. Dependability. Stability. Reliability. (but also potentially dated, old fashioned, stagnated)

Neither of these things has much relevance to the point of the article. The point of the article is something like this:

Imagine you go on a date, and during the course of the date you try on 30 different personalities, and at the end you ask the girl (or guy) to take a survey on which personality she (or he) liked best- In order to determine what kind of personality you should have.

Wouldn't you think that would come off kind of fake? Who you are, or who you should be, how you should dress, the way you talk, this is not something you can get out of a survey of what people think of you while you adopt a range of different reinventions of yourself.