16 ms·

Why do so many brands change their logos and look like everyone else?

546 points by herbertl 4y ago

altdataseller 4y ago
Pinterest and Target look too much alike.
layer8 4y ago
Maybe the Overton window of logo fonts is somehow shrinking, and the brands want to avoid appearing too offbeat.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
It probably makes it easier to have the same sweatshop make all the fashion brands’ products, and thereby increases their margin.
dpeck 4y ago
standing out is not something that established big companies are interested in doing. Generally they’re much more interested in expanding their share of whatever market they’re in than expanding to new markets. That is much different than being a “new” thing where being unique and different was valued to entice new customers and create/find markets that didn’t previously exist. The art and branding around corporations will reflect that over time. It’s a small glimpse into what is happening in technology as a whole as it matures and “professionalizes”.
credistick 4y ago
When you are a young company you want to stand out, you want to have personality. You are disruptive, championing some new way of doing things. When you are more mature (or at least want to seem like it) you adopt more mature brand language. No more the volatile, brash youth with risky new ideas. This is a trusted brand, for adults.
dagmx 4y ago
IMHO the simplest explanation is that style is cyclical, and we've entered into a minimalist, almost brutalist, period and these brands are simply skating to where the puck is. Will this design trend last? Probably not but doing a rebrand to freshen things up every few years is cheap enough, while the value in being "current" is very much worth it. A lot of those logos looked old fashioned and almost early 2000s in comparison, which tech forward folks probably don't care about, but it's subtly picked up by the average consumer. You'll notice this even for companies that haven't changed their brand in ages like Apple. All of Apple's branding and presentation style has changed in similar ways over the past few years.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Agree. They all look more modern in the new versions. It’s just a natural cycle of design, look at the history of logos for longer lived brands and you see the same thing.
- nine_k 4y ago
  The trick is to look quaint without looking old-fashioned. Few can pull it off. Maybe the Ferrari logo has this quality. Even better it is to look timeless; maybe the Mercedes Benz logo has this quality. These are really really few: say, Apple had to rework their iconic bitten apple logo.
  - vosper 4y ago
    Coca-cola and McDonalds are probably two good examples here. Especially Coca-cola.
    - nine_k 4y ago
      Coca-Cola indeed! They changed the taste, but the logo stays. Interestingly, they experimented with it in the early days [1], but the design from 1887 is basically what we have now, with minimal amendments. [1]: https://designbro.com/blog/brand-logos/coca-cola-logo-visual-identity/ https://designbro.com/blog/brand-logos/coca-cola-logo-visual...
    - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
      The hard thing to say, though, is "does Coca-cola's logo show timeless design?" or "Is Coca-cola's logo timeless because they just decided to never change it, and coke is such an iconic product that there is no need to?" I mean, the latter part appears to be pretty much what this article is arguing. Just look at the Pinterest change, from a nice, cursive logo to boring, generic block letters. Coca-cola may have made the same boring transition if somehow minimalist sans serif was all the rage in the late 1800s.
      - nine_k 4y ago
kradeelav 4y ago
(disclaimer: lead brand manager, been at the table of a lot of the meetings where these logo changes happen.) There's a few different reasons (especially depending on the company) why that these happen, but I personally think it boils down to two unintuitive quasi-psychological reasons. - When suits are fumbling around looking for a new shiny project that'll give them a sense of "legacy" and their fingerpints all over (that won't affect immediate profits), somewhere in marketing and brand is usually the first place they'll grab. If wins, fantastic, they've secured their legacy both in a career-spanning sense and at the company itself with a bonus. If it fails disastrously, easy enough to quietly switch back to the old and to save face by tackling a different project. - Sort of relatedly, a lot of marketing suits hate feeling "left out" of trends; it's something I loathe about the industry, the hyper-focus and optimization of being at the crest of new trends (when arguably they're usually shittier than the previous ones). Oftentimes their entire salary / sense of purpose of being at the job is tied into with presenting the latest and greatest, and insecure designers will be too happy to be enablers. (My opinion may be a minority of the industry itself as if it were me, we'd be back to 90's era logos for the sheer zany quality.)
- sfifs 4y ago
  This is the right answer. Empirically, continuity of brand assets actually drives higher brand recognition and awareness/shoppability advantage over time, particularly for consumer goods. Look through the disastrous Tropicana branding change example for how wrong can changing familiar assets go. However, the marketing teams get bored of their branding and ads way way before consumers do - after all each consumer see a big brand in a branding context maybe half a dozen to a dozen times a month for a few seconds at a time in advertising or stores. The marketing teams see it every day every hour :-) So they naturally desire for change - exacerbated by the fact that the "experts" in marketing agencies or relevant in house functions have no incentive to tell them different as they make money off of the change :-)
  - javajosh 4y ago
    >However, the marketing teams get bored of their branding and ads way way before consumers do Maybe the marketing teams from 12 big non-competing companies can "rotate" and do the work for a new company every month, coming back "home" once a year. Keep the eyes fresh.
NonNefarious 4y ago
Desperation to look "fresh," I guess. But often it's a huge failure. Sony changed its logo in the '80s, I believe, and wisely reversed their decision not long after: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/logopedia/images/d/de/It%27s_a_Sony.svg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/200?cb=20200804121233 https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/logopedia/images/d/de/It%2... Pioneer, unfortunately, stuck with its shitty redesign: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2c/6f/64/2c6f64d5649f8b553d7b65f047b381f6.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2c/6f/64/2c6f64d5649f8b553d7b...
- mulmen 4y ago
  Sony link is broken. Or maybe the logo was really that bad.
  - NonNefarious 4y ago
    Ha! Still working for me, but you're not missing much.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    Seems like some sort of weird referrer thing. I get some sort of placeholder when I first click it, and the same thing when I hit refresh. But if I actually go to the address bar and re-browse to the same URL, then it loads.
alexashka 4y ago
Because fashion and what looks good is when everyone does the same thing, but slightly differently.
underwater 4y ago
The article is confused about the difference between a logo and a word mark, which is what they are showing. Big brands are super pedantic about how and where logo marks and word marks are used. You shouldn't be seeing these word marks in contexts that are not already dripping in branding for the company. Look at the Pinterest Brand guidelines (https://business.pinterest.com/en-au/brand-guidelines/ https://business.pinterest.com/en-au/brand-guidelines/) and you well find them saying: "Only use the Pinterest badge (please don’t use our word mark)". The Pinterest badge is the exact same stylised letter P from the old wordmark. So, almost everywhere you encounter a Pinterest logo it will be the stylised graphic. They can do that because enough people recognise the brand that they can drop the "interest". The Facebook logo is an even weirder example because they are comparing the old Facebook app word mark with the newer Facebook-the-company word mark. That logo was specifically designed to look different from the app. Now that Facebook is now Meta, that uppercase logo has been retired. Microsoft, Facebook, Pinterest, Spotify and Airbnb all have stylised logo marks. eBay and Google use word marks, but are brightly coloured and immediately recognisable 99% of the time they are seen.
- mrxd 4y ago
  Also in the age of social media, visual identity is less about the wordmark. For most of these companies, their word mark doesn’t even show up on their social media feeds. Most have guidelines that often include a custom typeface, specific types of photography, editorial layouts, illustrations that define the brand.
- deleted 4y ago
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- modernerd 4y ago
  I mocked up a comparison of the full logos: https://imgur.com/a/v5yKD3o https://imgur.com/a/v5yKD3o They do retain more personality than when they're stripped down to their word marks, even if they still converge around a similar visual theme.
- 4y ago
frittata 4y ago
As a company grows, its branding evolves from the founders managing it themselves to eventually being overseen by an excessively large team of marketers. These marketers need something to do. An obvious project from them to undertake is a "rebrand". The marketers' goal is not creativity or innovation, its safety. So they look around and do whatever everyone else is doing, with maybe a few small adjustments. This guarantees they have something to occupy their time for 6-18 months, justifying their role in the company in case someone asks what they've been up to lately.
ekianjo 4y ago
What a botched job they did on Yves Saint Laurent logo. Truly amazing.
- pcurve 4y ago
  Personally, I think it is actually the best transformation among the fashion brand logos, because it also had practical benefit of simplifying its name to something more approachable and easier to pronounce. "Eave-sonlawrung." didn't exactly roll off your tongue ;-) I have a soft spot for the original logo, but at 50 years old, it had a good run compared to most brand logo.
  - throwaway744678 4y ago
    They dropped the easiest part (for English speakers): "eve"
    - dagmx 4y ago
      Only if you know that's what it's meant to sound like already. Yves is not intuitively spoken as eve (which is also incorrect but besides the point) by someone who is not familiar with French
      - jen20 4y ago
        I’ve heard several people pronounce it as “wives” while walking around the high rent shopping district that recently popped up near my house.
      - davidivadavid 4y ago
        No word is "intuitively spoken."
        dagmx 4y ago
        If we're talking in absolutes sure, but if you're taking an average person with a knowledge of only English, then Yves doesn't fit into any of the common word patterns a speaker would encounter.
ryanSrich 4y ago
Eli Schiff covered this in great detail with a 3 part series, which unfortunately is no longer fully available, but there is an archived version here → https://web.archive.org/web/20170513053653/http://www.elischiff.com/blog-1-1/2016/4/12/do-almost-anything-1-1 https://web.archive.org/web/20170513053653/http://www.elisch... It’s definitely worth a read if you’re interested in a better overview of this phenomenon.
asciiresort 4y ago
All those fashion brands changed their logos around 2018, with the exception of YSL back in 2012. In 2012, Hedi Slimane took over the helm of YSL, notorious for the minimalist brand change dropping the Yves from Saint Laurent, but also revitalizing the brand. In 2018, Hedi Slimane became C.D. Of Celine, which has always been touted for minimalism, and made the already minimalist brand even more minimalist by dropping the accented e. There is a mixture of independent fashion brands there, but the majority of the luxury fashion market has been bought up by LVMH and Kering. Those parent companies create a network and platform where brands cross pollinate, in the same way YC serves as an exchange of ideas between SF style startups. In practice, this means pressuring subsidiaries to follow the model that has worked for other brands, within and outside the family. Checkout dietprada on Instagram where they call out plagiarism commonplace in the fashion industry. My theory is that brand designers who work in tech are influenced by fashion and general product design, which follows apparel. First, trend-setting luxury brands have expanded ready to wear lines and more generally became more accessible, rather than something reserved for the ultra elite socialites. This means more exposure, familiarity. Second, designers make significantly more money than in decades prior. Following in the footsteps of Google, companies found that better design leads to more money. In prior decades, UI/UX designers didn’t exist. The profession matured relatively fast compared to the head start software engineering had. I remember the HCD ( human centered design ) department used to be really in the weeds about the science of ergonomics, and the role UI/UX barely existed. Then the other class of UI people in the early web were graphic designers. That or engineers with design sensibilities. With higher tech salaries, art and design schools have since pivoted towards these career placements. Meaning, there are now established design departments within tech companies, and these departments are comprised of people whose hobbies revolve around design and fashion. All of this creates a feedback loop where “good design” is based on its similarity to other good design. In the same way engineers didn’t get fired for electing IBM and frontend engineers picking React, designers, at least the ones in a megacorp, designers won’t get fired for electing Sans Serif. I’d like to blame Hedi Slimane for all of this.
causality0 4y ago
Don't forget it's not just company logos but also product logos within a company. Every Google product is now an indistinguishable rainbow circle.
im3w1l 4y ago
Of the tech companies, I prefer the new versions of Ebay and Spotify. I think the old ones were a bit much. However I think ebay should have kept the darker blue, the new one looks too similar to Google. Pinterest looks better before. The rest are about as good as before. But if we go into details. Microsoft's new color choice is too boring, like at least make it a more assertive darker shade of gray. I like the chonky, low-center-of-gravity look of the previous facebook. Airbnb is a bit more legible in the new version. Google went from playful to more rigid. I don't like the t in new Revolut (amusingly, because it goes against the grain). Edit: Less sure about spotify after thinking some more.
nayuki 4y ago
> "Sans serif invasion" section It should be noted that many of the old logos were already in some sans-serif font: Revolut, Facebook, Microsoft, Airbnb, Pinterest, eBay, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Rimowa. But yes, as the author notes later: > switched to a bland and very similar version of a sans serif font > All the quirks, peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies of both tech and fashion logos were dropped and replaced with a simple sans serif font.
stayux 4y ago
My theory on this "problem" is that we are already data and echo chamber-driven society. If people "en masse" decide that they have had enough, uniformity and sameness will go away:)
Barrin92 4y ago
the point about being readable on mobile or having icons that work at smaller sizes is I think one of the more important reasons. Personally though I really like the simplified and black/white style. It's clean and functional and it also seems less stressful in age where you're bombarded with logos and brands on every corner.
deleted 4y ago
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quickthrower2 4y ago
Would have been interesting to include Slack as it is just a logo (no typeface) going from a very distinctive logo to a generic one (at first I thought I had a python script running as it is similar to that) The good news for indie hackers is that temporary logo that is just your name in a san serif font … is probably good enough! I wonder when Lobster will come back in fashion?
etempleton 4y ago
It is a trend in a trend based space and also for practical reasons—a lot of old logos do not scale particularly well to a tiny profile picture. I mostly hate this trend, but it is in part a response to the overly playful logos. Look at the trend towards and away from skewmorphism in UX. Very similar here.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
It's the "tyranny of the minimalist" in my opinion. And it's not just fonts - it's app design, housing and architecture, retail, etc. The sterile, uncluttered-to-the-max ethos has simply infected all aspects of design, even to the point of obvious negative impacts on usability. Not sure if I'd say "Apple started it", but they were certainly on the forefront. I read an article recently (think it was on HN) about how, not too long ago, wealth and status was displayed with impossibly intricate designs - think the Belle Époque or Victorian designs. Now it's all expanses of black and white. I joke if I see another black-and-white "modern farmhouse" go up in my town I may just throw up on their driveway.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Now imagine your family insists the inside also has to look like a model home. So clean it looks like no one even lives in it. Then add young children. Then add rich, child-free friends. Then add shows and magazines about redecorating / 'rennovating' every six months. FML. Keeping up with the Joneses sucks.
  - jen20 4y ago
    > So clean it looks like no one even lives in it. This does not seem like a bad standard for a house to me.
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      Everyone is certainly free to decide what they consider reasonable cleanliness. With a family though one must either compromise together or demand/comply. And with young kids it's unrealistic to maintain a house so clean it appears unlived in. Unless one can afford servants or someone in the household is willing to take on that work. Aesthetically some of us also prefer a home filled with trinkets and projects, and even with ornate embellishments in the house itself.
- yen223 4y ago
  There's something about talking about minimalism on a forum that does not even have bolded text.
voldacar 4y ago
Some of those fashion brand logos are really surprisingly awful. The Burberry and YSL ones in particular are just unforgivably tasteless and bland.
CodeWriter23 4y ago
Flat Design / Material Design.
zoom6628 4y ago
Methinks symptomatic of the “bullshit jobs” scenario. Another poster pointed out about need for low risk legacy, another points out change for something to do. All valid and clatter with what I have observed in my life. Also I have seen brand logo changes as part of a subtle message that company has changed in some way, usually trying to change away from some negative press, and the logo is a cynical attempt to show a new direction yada yada. For my 2c corporate logos have gone from art to BS as in Boring Shit, over last 20 years.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  Example here: https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/uber-promises-to-do-better-in-a-new-brand-campaign-featuring-the-companys-ceo/ https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/uber-promises-to-do-b... Once Dara took the reigns. All is forgiven since it's a new logo now right?
pcurve 4y ago
You know what's hilarious? Coca Cola went in opposite direction. lol. https://logos-world.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Coca-Cola-Logo-History-700x639.jpg https://logos-world.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Coca-Cola...
- barrysteve 4y ago
  That one guy in 1887 nailed it.
- userbinator 4y ago
  In contrast, its competitor Pepsi went all over the place: https://logos-world.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Pepsi-Logo-History.jpg https://logos-world.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Pepsi-Log...
  - petepete 4y ago
    Thankfully Pepsi reined it in, they were on the verge of creating a whole new Pepsi Universe. https://archive.org/details/pepsi-arnell-021109 https://archive.org/details/pepsi-arnell-021109
    - projektfu 4y ago
      If you handed that to me before the Pepsi logo were released I would have assumed it was parody.
      - pcurve 4y ago
        Oh believe me, it got panned in the industry for its absurdity.
  - TillE 4y ago
    I never noticed that they'd replaced their distinctive red-white-blue logo (1950-2008) with something that looks more like a basketball than anything else.
  - 4y ago
taspeotis 4y ago
https://youtu.be/31PtYw7WeLU https://youtu.be/31PtYw7WeLU
- shanghaikid 4y ago
  LOL
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  The new GAP logo should be kem.
akamaka 4y ago
What this article misses is how most of these old designs are also unoriginal, using typefaces that were overused: - 1700s-style hairline serif fonts for fashion brands, attempting to give an aura of being an old established fashion house - Fonts with a playful, often outlined style for Web 2.0 era companies, emphasizing the human element of users being contributors
jaimex2 4y ago
Basically Apple is to blame for the bland samish-eveywhere Internet we have today. No Flash No Fonts No Multi-tasking No Widescreen No Uniqueness. Think Diffrent indeed.
- jen20 4y ago
  > No Widescreen What are you talking about? To a good first approximation, every laptop computer or phone you can buy today has a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio screen (much to my annoyance). The fact that people don’t use it is because wide designs are hard to read. This is an established fact in print, for example, which is why newspapers use columns, and why properly typeset books have around 80 characters per line. > No Fonts WTF? Almost every page I visit wants to download tens of megabytes of web fonts, none of which I permit. > No Multi-tasking I can’t even work out what you mean by this. I’m replying on a iPhone with a Picture in Picture video playing in the top corner, and just received a notification. I’d love to know what your definition of multi-tasking is, frankly, because it has zero basis in operating system reality.
d--b 4y ago
Re: fashion. This is wildly speculative, but it could be that the luxury fashion industry has broadened its consumer base significantly in Asia. And Asian consumers aren’t all that comfortable with cursive or serif fonts?
- ekam 4y ago
  Why on earth would asians be uncomfortable with cursive or serif fonts?
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    And why should Asia be considered anyway unified in this? Take Korean and Chinese and see that they have entirely different typography, even Japanese Katakana is still separate...
    - jwilk 4y ago
      Sure, they are different, but they aren't remotely similar to Latin either. I can read Cyrillic with some effort, but when I see Cyrillic cursive I immediately give up. I can imagine that it's even more difficult for, say, a Chinese speaker to read Latin cursive. That doesn't explain the shift towards sans-serif though. All the Chinese and Japanese fonts I accidentally ran into had Latin characters with serifs.
begueradj 4y ago
I think it's due to human nature: we tend to imitate others to feel we belong to them. For example in countries where specific "information" or propaganda is repeated over and over, the majority of people tend to comply to that new propaganda.
listenallyall 4y ago
It's kind of easy to pick and choose specific examples, ignore counters, and claim to prove a point. Tiffany & Co, Canali, Rolex, Jimmy Choo, Ferragamo, Prada, Hermes, Bally, Dior, etc. all still have serif fonts (or cursive in Ferragamo's case). And I'm not sure Burberry has changed -- I walked by a store this week and it still had the traditional logo above the door.
kyawzazaw 4y ago
Weird someone else made the exact same thread on this topic. https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1545819896004624384 https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1545819896004624384 Same exact image used too.
- stncls 4y ago
  They mention the OP in passing at the very end of the thread (OP is dated November 18, 2020 [1]; tweet is from July 9, 2022). Indeed, down in that thread, they even include an image from OP with attribution cropped! Btw, the first image in the thread is also a very widely shared image on Twitter with no attribution. Earliest I found in a quick reverse image search is from Dec 13 2018 [2], but I doubt it's the original. [1] bottom of page: https://velvetshark.com/articles https://velvetshark.com/articles [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/hakkocaturk/status/1073192244889509888 https://mobile.twitter.com/hakkocaturk/status/10731922448895...
- sabon 4y ago
  Author of the article here. There are many, MANY versions of images from my article on Twitter, with attribution cropped. I wanted to have a subtle and small contribution and to not be obnoxious. It seems that it's not a good idea. Too easy to crop, post as your own and sound smart. It's even worse on LinkedIn. There were multiple posts with cropped images, literally tens of thousands of likes, and zero attribution, then not even addressing direct comments and calling them out. David Perell used one of the cropped images but he didn't know the source. When I commented on it, he added the article to his Twitter thread, with proper attribution.
- thenerdhead 4y ago
  I was going to comment this. Did this guy just take credit without any attribution of this article written 2 years prior?
t_mann 4y ago
Since taste is necessarily personal, here's my personal opinion: 100% of the tech logos look (significantly) better in the right column, and maybe ~50% of the fashion ones (though most are close to indifferent there). The only one that I feel will be dearly missed is the Rimowa one, Balmain also feels less special now. Balenciaga and Burberry weren't an improvement, but neither side looks great there imho.
lqet 4y ago
Because the scientific arguments for updating the brand are too damn convincing. How else would you improve the gravitational pull in your brand universe? https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell-021109.pdf https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell... Just look at the DNA research they have done (page 12)! Dimensionalize exponentially.
- dl7 4y ago
  Looks like a load of bogus but I love it!
Izkata 4y ago
> Brands are more than logos now > People at the head of these powerful brands know that they are not defined by their logo anymore but by the product or service they provide. This applies more to the fashion side than the tech side, but I'd like to provide an additional counterpoint here: If I didn't already know about the redesign and just saw these new ones in a store, I'd assume it was some sort of low-quality knockoff.
ben_w 4y ago
Back in the 90s, my school teachers said that advertising is a balance between standing out and not being so different you’re just weird. I wonder if Party Cannon still uses the incongruous logo?: https://www.creativebloq.com/logo-design/death-metal-logo-party-cannon-101517094 https://www.creativebloq.com/logo-design/death-metal-logo-pa...
- seydor 4y ago
  I think in the 90s it was more about standing out. and being provocative if possible , since there was very little that was off-limits
midnitewarrior 4y ago
Why do teenage girls often get the same hairstyles?
dotcoma 4y ago
Apart from Spotify, all the other tech logos look worse now than they used to…
larsrc 4y ago
Even worse is the trend of what I call "lazy logos". Take the name and do a typographical tweak to one letter. Upside-down, different colour, italics, whatever. One slightly different letter and bam! It's a logo. Boooring!
albert_e 4y ago
Is it just me or half the examples listed under "Sans Serif Invasion" have even the old logo in a Sans Serif font?
deleted 4y ago
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sktrdie 4y ago
Doesn't this mainly have to do with capitalism and a sort of "tragedy of the commons"? Why do supermarkets look so dull, boring and not at all aesthetically pleasing? Because they're super optimized for selling to the majority of customers. And for the majority of costumers probably aesthetics is not that important. I find this very clear also in European architecture of the ~1600. Some of the buildings all over Italy, Germany and England are these gorgeous pieces of art that would probably never have been built if the formula was "optimize the hell out of this so we can make short term profit".
Reason077 4y ago
Revolut, Facebook, and Pinterest’s new logos look “wrong” to me. The old ones look more natural and recognisable. The others from the tech group all look like natural evolutions of the logos. But perhaps it’s just that they changed long ago so there’s been plenty of time to get used to the new ones?
nickjj 4y ago
I remember a phase where a lot of tech companies tried to copy Amazon's smiling arrow into their existing brand's image. There was a time where DigitalOcean had a little smile line under a cloud on their home page years ago but they've removed it since then.
chiefalchemist 4y ago
Two words: Focus groups. Logos end up looking the same, for the same reason (e.g., autos) end up looking the same (i.e., color options). That said, what gets lost on logos is they are supposed to be an identity, not a badge for joining "the crowd." Instead, unique is abandoned for fashionable and/or trendy.
- drivers99 4y ago
  I’m currently (literally: I just switched apps from kindle to browsing HN moments ago) reading “Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned”, chapter 8, “Unchaining Innovation” and they are currently pointing out how consensus leads to a washed-out, bland sameness. A corollary that they wrote is that if you want to explore innovative ideas, you could look for something that splits expert opinions sharply.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    Agreed. Funny enough I'm about to start "Different" by Youngme Moon. https://hbr.org/2010/05/why-being-different-makes-all https://hbr.org/2010/05/why-being-different-makes-all It's also why I believe "Zero to One" is essential. In short, move into a space of less and less competition. Obviously being the same prevents that. Btw, "Blue Ocean Shift" has the same msg. A bit long winded but in the end solid stuff.
modernerd 4y ago
These are just the word marks, not the full logos. I mocked up a comparison of the logos (Microsoft/Airbnb/Spotify/Pinterest rarely use their word marks without the accompanying icon) and they start to retain a _little_ more personality, at least for the tech comparison. https://imgur.com/a/v5yKD3o https://imgur.com/a/v5yKD3o It still seems fair to say they're more bland than past iterations, though. The theme is ”[optional icon] + sans serif word mark”, and it's a good example of “small m minimalism” — a kind of unthinking collective march toward an absence of detail — touched on by The Cultural Tutor in this thread: https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1538211892707086338 https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1538211892707086338 > Perhaps minimalist design is so prevalent because we no longer have anything to say. > You don't need me to explain what the Gothic cathedral says, for example. > But the skyscraper? It doesn't say anything, really. It's just... there. > And suddenly everything, everywhere starts to look the same. > Absolute neutrality. No detail. No identity. > What does that say about us?
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
  Architecture is a wierd one to pick on because it has function and form. For instance, the gothic cathedral doesn't actually need those two giant pillars out front, it is held up by it's cantilever. So we removed those. Also... Anyone else think it's very dark in here? How about we change out the engraved walls for windows? All this thick concrete and engravments don't allow us to build bigger than 8 stories. How about we change it out to a steel internal design and add more windows. It will allow more light, decrease weight and allow us to build higher. > Absolute neutrality. No detail. No identity. > What does that say about us? I disagree entirely with the basis of your argument. The amount of art in TV, Movies, Video games and overall graphic design has been on an incredible trajectory. What happened is that we started to understand our goals and mission. Adding two $400k gothic style pillars to the facade of a building that do absolutely nothing for thee structural soundness, or spend that 400k to add a bit more elegance to the rooms? pretentious and ostentatious or functional?
  - ricardobeat 4y ago
    A square box of concrete can be functional. I don’t think that trade-off is real - can’t think of a single classical, beautiful building I’ve been to where the interior would benefit that much from a flat glass facade. In fact what comes to mind is Penn Station as a counter-example. Do you have any examples?
ravenstine 4y ago
We're in an economic era that mostly selects for safety. What's more safe than a plain sans-serif font? Business owners and C-level execs will believe they won't have to worry that a logo may be turning off a demographic because they think that plain letters will turn away no one or appeal to most. The day there's a serious economic downturn forcing the losers to close their doors, I would bet the newcomers will have more interesting logos. As an aside, there's a certain attitude among designer-types on imposing agreed upon "standards" designed to be ultra-inclusive and inoffensive. This is not only a cause for why so many logos have become minimalist, but why so many business websites are using nearly identical illustrations of abstract looking humanoids with atypical skin colors (look up "Alegria" design). It's global-homogenization driven by the politics in vogue. Related reading: "Here’s why Alegria is taking over tech world interfaces." https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/dont-worry-these-gangley-armed-cartoons-are-here-to-protect-you-from-big-tech/ https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/dont-worry-these-gangley-armed-... "CalArts Style And What You Need to Know About It" https://blog.displate.com/calarts-style/ https://blog.displate.com/calarts-style/
pizzathyme 4y ago
Counter example: Meta’s new logo. It’s an elegant infinity symbol + M + VR goggle shape
davidgerard 4y ago
Missing from this article: contacting any of the brands and designers and asking "why?" The "why" bit is entirely speculation.
phendrenad2 4y ago
For the same reason that if an open-source project hasn't had any github commits in a fee months, people on HN call it "abandoned". A new logo signals to people that the company is active, their products are being updated and evolved, and they're not stuck in the past. Imagine if a company reverted back to the logo you remember from your childhood. You'd think they were regressing backward also.
rav3ndust 4y ago
This isn't really "changing the look and logo", but I do miss the dessert-themed Android names. I thought they gave each release a bit of their own personality.

546 points by herbertl 4y ago

altdataseller 4y ago

Pinterest and Target look too much alike.

layer8 4y ago

Maybe the Overton window of logo fonts is somehow shrinking, and the brands want to avoid appearing too offbeat.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

It probably makes it easier to have the same sweatshop make all the fashion brands’ products, and thereby increases their margin.

dpeck 4y ago

standing out is not something that established big companies are interested in doing. Generally they’re much more interested in expanding their share of whatever market they’re in than expanding to new markets. That is much different than being a “new” thing where being unique and different was valued to entice new customers and create/find markets that didn’t previously exist. The art and branding around corporations will reflect that over time. It’s a small glimpse into what is happening in technology as a whole as it matures and “professionalizes”.

credistick 4y ago

When you are a young company you want to stand out, you want to have personality. You are disruptive, championing some new way of doing things. When you are more mature (or at least want to seem like it) you adopt more mature brand language. No more the volatile, brash youth with risky new ideas. This is a trusted brand, for adults.

dagmx 4y ago

IMHO the simplest explanation is that style is cyclical, and we've entered into a minimalist, almost brutalist, period and these brands are simply skating to where the puck is. Will this design trend last? Probably not but doing a rebrand to freshen things up every few years is cheap enough, while the value in being "current" is very much worth it. A lot of those logos looked old fashioned and almost early 2000s in comparison, which tech forward folks probably don't care about, but it's subtly picked up by the average consumer. You'll notice this even for companies that haven't changed their brand in ages like Apple. All of Apple's branding and presentation style has changed in similar ways over the past few years.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
Agree. They all look more modern in the new versions. It’s just a natural cycle of design, look at the history of logos for longer lived brands and you see the same thing.
nine_k 4y ago
The trick is to look quaint without looking old-fashioned. Few can pull it off. Maybe the Ferrari logo has this quality. Even better it is to look timeless; maybe the Mercedes Benz logo has this quality. These are really really few: say, Apple had to rework their iconic bitten apple logo.
- vosper 4y ago
  Coca-cola and McDonalds are probably two good examples here. Especially Coca-cola.
  - nine_k 4y ago
    Coca-Cola indeed! They changed the taste, but the logo stays. Interestingly, they experimented with it in the early days [1], but the design from 1887 is basically what we have now, with minimal amendments. [1]: https://designbro.com/blog/brand-logos/coca-cola-logo-visual-identity/ https://designbro.com/blog/brand-logos/coca-cola-logo-visual...
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    The hard thing to say, though, is "does Coca-cola's logo show timeless design?" or "Is Coca-cola's logo timeless because they just decided to never change it, and coke is such an iconic product that there is no need to?" I mean, the latter part appears to be pretty much what this article is arguing. Just look at the Pinterest change, from a nice, cursive logo to boring, generic block letters. Coca-cola may have made the same boring transition if somehow minimalist sans serif was all the rage in the late 1800s.
    - nine_k 4y ago

kradeelav 4y ago

(disclaimer: lead brand manager, been at the table of a lot of the meetings where these logo changes happen.) There's a few different reasons (especially depending on the company) why that these happen, but I personally think it boils down to two unintuitive quasi-psychological reasons. - When suits are fumbling around looking for a new shiny project that'll give them a sense of "legacy" and their fingerpints all over (that won't affect immediate profits), somewhere in marketing and brand is usually the first place they'll grab. If wins, fantastic, they've secured their legacy both in a career-spanning sense and at the company itself with a bonus. If it fails disastrously, easy enough to quietly switch back to the old and to save face by tackling a different project. - Sort of relatedly, a lot of marketing suits hate feeling "left out" of trends; it's something I loathe about the industry, the hyper-focus and optimization of being at the crest of new trends (when arguably they're usually shittier than the previous ones). Oftentimes their entire salary / sense of purpose of being at the job is tied into with presenting the latest and greatest, and insecure designers will be too happy to be enablers. (My opinion may be a minority of the industry itself as if it were me, we'd be back to 90's era logos for the sheer zany quality.)

sfifs 4y ago
This is the right answer. Empirically, continuity of brand assets actually drives higher brand recognition and awareness/shoppability advantage over time, particularly for consumer goods. Look through the disastrous Tropicana branding change example for how wrong can changing familiar assets go. However, the marketing teams get bored of their branding and ads way way before consumers do - after all each consumer see a big brand in a branding context maybe half a dozen to a dozen times a month for a few seconds at a time in advertising or stores. The marketing teams see it every day every hour :-) So they naturally desire for change - exacerbated by the fact that the "experts" in marketing agencies or relevant in house functions have no incentive to tell them different as they make money off of the change :-)
- javajosh 4y ago
  >However, the marketing teams get bored of their branding and ads way way before consumers do Maybe the marketing teams from 12 big non-competing companies can "rotate" and do the work for a new company every month, coming back "home" once a year. Keep the eyes fresh.

NonNefarious 4y ago

Desperation to look "fresh," I guess. But often it's a huge failure. Sony changed its logo in the '80s, I believe, and wisely reversed their decision not long after: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/logopedia/images/d/de/It%27s_a_Sony.svg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/200?cb=20200804121233 https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/logopedia/images/d/de/It%2... Pioneer, unfortunately, stuck with its shitty redesign: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2c/6f/64/2c6f64d5649f8b553d7b65f047b381f6.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2c/6f/64/2c6f64d5649f8b553d7b...

mulmen 4y ago
Sony link is broken. Or maybe the logo was really that bad.
- NonNefarious 4y ago
  Ha! Still working for me, but you're not missing much.
- Izkata 4y ago
  Seems like some sort of weird referrer thing. I get some sort of placeholder when I first click it, and the same thing when I hit refresh. But if I actually go to the address bar and re-browse to the same URL, then it loads.

alexashka 4y ago

Because fashion and what looks good is when everyone does the same thing, but slightly differently.

underwater 4y ago

The article is confused about the difference between a logo and a word mark, which is what they are showing. Big brands are super pedantic about how and where logo marks and word marks are used. You shouldn't be seeing these word marks in contexts that are not already dripping in branding for the company. Look at the Pinterest Brand guidelines (https://business.pinterest.com/en-au/brand-guidelines/ https://business.pinterest.com/en-au/brand-guidelines/) and you well find them saying: "Only use the Pinterest badge (please don’t use our word mark)". The Pinterest badge is the exact same stylised letter P from the old wordmark. So, almost everywhere you encounter a Pinterest logo it will be the stylised graphic. They can do that because enough people recognise the brand that they can drop the "interest". The Facebook logo is an even weirder example because they are comparing the old Facebook app word mark with the newer Facebook-the-company word mark. That logo was specifically designed to look different from the app. Now that Facebook is now Meta, that uppercase logo has been retired. Microsoft, Facebook, Pinterest, Spotify and Airbnb all have stylised logo marks. eBay and Google use word marks, but are brightly coloured and immediately recognisable 99% of the time they are seen.

mrxd 4y ago
Also in the age of social media, visual identity is less about the wordmark. For most of these companies, their word mark doesn’t even show up on their social media feeds. Most have guidelines that often include a custom typeface, specific types of photography, editorial layouts, illustrations that define the brand.
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modernerd 4y ago
I mocked up a comparison of the full logos: https://imgur.com/a/v5yKD3o https://imgur.com/a/v5yKD3o They do retain more personality than when they're stripped down to their word marks, even if they still converge around a similar visual theme.
4y ago

frittata 4y ago

As a company grows, its branding evolves from the founders managing it themselves to eventually being overseen by an excessively large team of marketers. These marketers need something to do. An obvious project from them to undertake is a "rebrand". The marketers' goal is not creativity or innovation, its safety. So they look around and do whatever everyone else is doing, with maybe a few small adjustments. This guarantees they have something to occupy their time for 6-18 months, justifying their role in the company in case someone asks what they've been up to lately.

ekianjo 4y ago

What a botched job they did on Yves Saint Laurent logo. Truly amazing.

pcurve 4y ago
Personally, I think it is actually the best transformation among the fashion brand logos, because it also had practical benefit of simplifying its name to something more approachable and easier to pronounce. "Eave-sonlawrung." didn't exactly roll off your tongue ;-) I have a soft spot for the original logo, but at 50 years old, it had a good run compared to most brand logo.
- throwaway744678 4y ago
  They dropped the easiest part (for English speakers): "eve"
  - dagmx 4y ago
    Only if you know that's what it's meant to sound like already. Yves is not intuitively spoken as eve (which is also incorrect but besides the point) by someone who is not familiar with French
    - jen20 4y ago
      I’ve heard several people pronounce it as “wives” while walking around the high rent shopping district that recently popped up near my house.
    - davidivadavid 4y ago
      No word is "intuitively spoken."
      - dagmx 4y ago
        If we're talking in absolutes sure, but if you're taking an average person with a knowledge of only English, then Yves doesn't fit into any of the common word patterns a speaker would encounter.

ryanSrich 4y ago

Eli Schiff covered this in great detail with a 3 part series, which unfortunately is no longer fully available, but there is an archived version here → https://web.archive.org/web/20170513053653/http://www.elischiff.com/blog-1-1/2016/4/12/do-almost-anything-1-1 https://web.archive.org/web/20170513053653/http://www.elisch... It’s definitely worth a read if you’re interested in a better overview of this phenomenon.

asciiresort 4y ago

All those fashion brands changed their logos around 2018, with the exception of YSL back in 2012. In 2012, Hedi Slimane took over the helm of YSL, notorious for the minimalist brand change dropping the Yves from Saint Laurent, but also revitalizing the brand. In 2018, Hedi Slimane became C.D. Of Celine, which has always been touted for minimalism, and made the already minimalist brand even more minimalist by dropping the accented e. There is a mixture of independent fashion brands there, but the majority of the luxury fashion market has been bought up by LVMH and Kering. Those parent companies create a network and platform where brands cross pollinate, in the same way YC serves as an exchange of ideas between SF style startups. In practice, this means pressuring subsidiaries to follow the model that has worked for other brands, within and outside the family. Checkout dietprada on Instagram where they call out plagiarism commonplace in the fashion industry. My theory is that brand designers who work in tech are influenced by fashion and general product design, which follows apparel. First, trend-setting luxury brands have expanded ready to wear lines and more generally became more accessible, rather than something reserved for the ultra elite socialites. This means more exposure, familiarity. Second, designers make significantly more money than in decades prior. Following in the footsteps of Google, companies found that better design leads to more money. In prior decades, UI/UX designers didn’t exist. The profession matured relatively fast compared to the head start software engineering had. I remember the HCD ( human centered design ) department used to be really in the weeds about the science of ergonomics, and the role UI/UX barely existed. Then the other class of UI people in the early web were graphic designers. That or engineers with design sensibilities. With higher tech salaries, art and design schools have since pivoted towards these career placements. Meaning, there are now established design departments within tech companies, and these departments are comprised of people whose hobbies revolve around design and fashion. All of this creates a feedback loop where “good design” is based on its similarity to other good design. In the same way engineers didn’t get fired for electing IBM and frontend engineers picking React, designers, at least the ones in a megacorp, designers won’t get fired for electing Sans Serif. I’d like to blame Hedi Slimane for all of this.

causality0 4y ago

Don't forget it's not just company logos but also product logos within a company. Every Google product is now an indistinguishable rainbow circle.

im3w1l 4y ago

Of the tech companies, I prefer the new versions of Ebay and Spotify. I think the old ones were a bit much. However I think ebay should have kept the darker blue, the new one looks too similar to Google. Pinterest looks better before. The rest are about as good as before. But if we go into details. Microsoft's new color choice is too boring, like at least make it a more assertive darker shade of gray. I like the chonky, low-center-of-gravity look of the previous facebook. Airbnb is a bit more legible in the new version. Google went from playful to more rigid. I don't like the t in new Revolut (amusingly, because it goes against the grain). Edit: Less sure about spotify after thinking some more.

nayuki 4y ago

> "Sans serif invasion" section It should be noted that many of the old logos were already in some sans-serif font: Revolut, Facebook, Microsoft, Airbnb, Pinterest, eBay, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Rimowa. But yes, as the author notes later: > switched to a bland and very similar version of a sans serif font > All the quirks, peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies of both tech and fashion logos were dropped and replaced with a simple sans serif font.

stayux 4y ago

My theory on this "problem" is that we are already data and echo chamber-driven society. If people "en masse" decide that they have had enough, uniformity and sameness will go away:)

Barrin92 4y ago

the point about being readable on mobile or having icons that work at smaller sizes is I think one of the more important reasons. Personally though I really like the simplified and black/white style. It's clean and functional and it also seems less stressful in age where you're bombarded with logos and brands on every corner.

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quickthrower2 4y ago

Would have been interesting to include Slack as it is just a logo (no typeface) going from a very distinctive logo to a generic one (at first I thought I had a python script running as it is similar to that) The good news for indie hackers is that temporary logo that is just your name in a san serif font … is probably good enough! I wonder when Lobster will come back in fashion?

etempleton 4y ago

It is a trend in a trend based space and also for practical reasons—a lot of old logos do not scale particularly well to a tiny profile picture. I mostly hate this trend, but it is in part a response to the overly playful logos. Look at the trend towards and away from skewmorphism in UX. Very similar here.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

It's the "tyranny of the minimalist" in my opinion. And it's not just fonts - it's app design, housing and architecture, retail, etc. The sterile, uncluttered-to-the-max ethos has simply infected all aspects of design, even to the point of obvious negative impacts on usability. Not sure if I'd say "Apple started it", but they were certainly on the forefront. I read an article recently (think it was on HN) about how, not too long ago, wealth and status was displayed with impossibly intricate designs - think the Belle Époque or Victorian designs. Now it's all expanses of black and white. I joke if I see another black-and-white "modern farmhouse" go up in my town I may just throw up on their driveway.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Now imagine your family insists the inside also has to look like a model home. So clean it looks like no one even lives in it. Then add young children. Then add rich, child-free friends. Then add shows and magazines about redecorating / 'rennovating' every six months. FML. Keeping up with the Joneses sucks.
- jen20 4y ago
  > So clean it looks like no one even lives in it. This does not seem like a bad standard for a house to me.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Everyone is certainly free to decide what they consider reasonable cleanliness. With a family though one must either compromise together or demand/comply. And with young kids it's unrealistic to maintain a house so clean it appears unlived in. Unless one can afford servants or someone in the household is willing to take on that work. Aesthetically some of us also prefer a home filled with trinkets and projects, and even with ornate embellishments in the house itself.
yen223 4y ago
There's something about talking about minimalism on a forum that does not even have bolded text.

voldacar 4y ago

Some of those fashion brand logos are really surprisingly awful. The Burberry and YSL ones in particular are just unforgivably tasteless and bland.

CodeWriter23 4y ago

Flat Design / Material Design.

zoom6628 4y ago

Methinks symptomatic of the “bullshit jobs” scenario. Another poster pointed out about need for low risk legacy, another points out change for something to do. All valid and clatter with what I have observed in my life. Also I have seen brand logo changes as part of a subtle message that company has changed in some way, usually trying to change away from some negative press, and the logo is a cynical attempt to show a new direction yada yada. For my 2c corporate logos have gone from art to BS as in Boring Shit, over last 20 years.

hackernewds 4y ago
Example here: https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/uber-promises-to-do-better-in-a-new-brand-campaign-featuring-the-companys-ceo/ https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/uber-promises-to-do-b... Once Dara took the reigns. All is forgiven since it's a new logo now right?

pcurve 4y ago

You know what's hilarious? Coca Cola went in opposite direction. lol. https://logos-world.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Coca-Cola-Logo-History-700x639.jpg https://logos-world.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Coca-Cola...

barrysteve 4y ago
That one guy in 1887 nailed it.
userbinator 4y ago
In contrast, its competitor Pepsi went all over the place: https://logos-world.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Pepsi-Logo-History.jpg https://logos-world.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Pepsi-Log...
- petepete 4y ago
  Thankfully Pepsi reined it in, they were on the verge of creating a whole new Pepsi Universe. https://archive.org/details/pepsi-arnell-021109 https://archive.org/details/pepsi-arnell-021109
  - projektfu 4y ago
    If you handed that to me before the Pepsi logo were released I would have assumed it was parody.
    - pcurve 4y ago
      Oh believe me, it got panned in the industry for its absurdity.
- TillE 4y ago
  I never noticed that they'd replaced their distinctive red-white-blue logo (1950-2008) with something that looks more like a basketball than anything else.
- 4y ago

taspeotis 4y ago

https://youtu.be/31PtYw7WeLU https://youtu.be/31PtYw7WeLU

shanghaikid 4y ago
LOL
dredmorbius 4y ago
The new GAP logo should be kem.

akamaka 4y ago

What this article misses is how most of these old designs are also unoriginal, using typefaces that were overused: - 1700s-style hairline serif fonts for fashion brands, attempting to give an aura of being an old established fashion house - Fonts with a playful, often outlined style for Web 2.0 era companies, emphasizing the human element of users being contributors

jaimex2 4y ago

Basically Apple is to blame for the bland samish-eveywhere Internet we have today. No Flash No Fonts No Multi-tasking No Widescreen No Uniqueness. Think Diffrent indeed.

jen20 4y ago
> No Widescreen What are you talking about? To a good first approximation, every laptop computer or phone you can buy today has a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio screen (much to my annoyance). The fact that people don’t use it is because wide designs are hard to read. This is an established fact in print, for example, which is why newspapers use columns, and why properly typeset books have around 80 characters per line. > No Fonts WTF? Almost every page I visit wants to download tens of megabytes of web fonts, none of which I permit. > No Multi-tasking I can’t even work out what you mean by this. I’m replying on a iPhone with a Picture in Picture video playing in the top corner, and just received a notification. I’d love to know what your definition of multi-tasking is, frankly, because it has zero basis in operating system reality.

d--b 4y ago

Re: fashion. This is wildly speculative, but it could be that the luxury fashion industry has broadened its consumer base significantly in Asia. And Asian consumers aren’t all that comfortable with cursive or serif fonts?

ekam 4y ago
Why on earth would asians be uncomfortable with cursive or serif fonts?
- Ekaros 4y ago
  And why should Asia be considered anyway unified in this? Take Korean and Chinese and see that they have entirely different typography, even Japanese Katakana is still separate...
  - jwilk 4y ago
    Sure, they are different, but they aren't remotely similar to Latin either. I can read Cyrillic with some effort, but when I see Cyrillic cursive I immediately give up. I can imagine that it's even more difficult for, say, a Chinese speaker to read Latin cursive. That doesn't explain the shift towards sans-serif though. All the Chinese and Japanese fonts I accidentally ran into had Latin characters with serifs.

begueradj 4y ago

I think it's due to human nature: we tend to imitate others to feel we belong to them. For example in countries where specific "information" or propaganda is repeated over and over, the majority of people tend to comply to that new propaganda.

listenallyall 4y ago

It's kind of easy to pick and choose specific examples, ignore counters, and claim to prove a point. Tiffany & Co, Canali, Rolex, Jimmy Choo, Ferragamo, Prada, Hermes, Bally, Dior, etc. all still have serif fonts (or cursive in Ferragamo's case). And I'm not sure Burberry has changed -- I walked by a store this week and it still had the traditional logo above the door.

kyawzazaw 4y ago

Weird someone else made the exact same thread on this topic. https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1545819896004624384 https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1545819896004624384 Same exact image used too.

stncls 4y ago
They mention the OP in passing at the very end of the thread (OP is dated November 18, 2020 [1]; tweet is from July 9, 2022). Indeed, down in that thread, they even include an image from OP with attribution cropped! Btw, the first image in the thread is also a very widely shared image on Twitter with no attribution. Earliest I found in a quick reverse image search is from Dec 13 2018 [2], but I doubt it's the original. [1] bottom of page: https://velvetshark.com/articles https://velvetshark.com/articles [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/hakkocaturk/status/1073192244889509888 https://mobile.twitter.com/hakkocaturk/status/10731922448895...
sabon 4y ago
Author of the article here. There are many, MANY versions of images from my article on Twitter, with attribution cropped. I wanted to have a subtle and small contribution and to not be obnoxious. It seems that it's not a good idea. Too easy to crop, post as your own and sound smart. It's even worse on LinkedIn. There were multiple posts with cropped images, literally tens of thousands of likes, and zero attribution, then not even addressing direct comments and calling them out. David Perell used one of the cropped images but he didn't know the source. When I commented on it, he added the article to his Twitter thread, with proper attribution.
thenerdhead 4y ago
I was going to comment this. Did this guy just take credit without any attribution of this article written 2 years prior?

t_mann 4y ago

Since taste is necessarily personal, here's my personal opinion: 100% of the tech logos look (significantly) better in the right column, and maybe ~50% of the fashion ones (though most are close to indifferent there). The only one that I feel will be dearly missed is the Rimowa one, Balmain also feels less special now. Balenciaga and Burberry weren't an improvement, but neither side looks great there imho.

lqet 4y ago

Because the scientific arguments for updating the brand are too damn convincing. How else would you improve the gravitational pull in your brand universe? https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell-021109.pdf https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell... Just look at the DNA research they have done (page 12)! Dimensionalize exponentially.

dl7 4y ago
Looks like a load of bogus but I love it!

Izkata 4y ago

> Brands are more than logos now > People at the head of these powerful brands know that they are not defined by their logo anymore but by the product or service they provide. This applies more to the fashion side than the tech side, but I'd like to provide an additional counterpoint here: If I didn't already know about the redesign and just saw these new ones in a store, I'd assume it was some sort of low-quality knockoff.

ben_w 4y ago

Back in the 90s, my school teachers said that advertising is a balance between standing out and not being so different you’re just weird. I wonder if Party Cannon still uses the incongruous logo?: https://www.creativebloq.com/logo-design/death-metal-logo-party-cannon-101517094 https://www.creativebloq.com/logo-design/death-metal-logo-pa...

seydor 4y ago
I think in the 90s it was more about standing out. and being provocative if possible , since there was very little that was off-limits

midnitewarrior 4y ago

Why do teenage girls often get the same hairstyles?

dotcoma 4y ago

Apart from Spotify, all the other tech logos look worse now than they used to…

larsrc 4y ago

Even worse is the trend of what I call "lazy logos". Take the name and do a typographical tweak to one letter. Upside-down, different colour, italics, whatever. One slightly different letter and bam! It's a logo. Boooring!

albert_e 4y ago

Is it just me or half the examples listed under "Sans Serif Invasion" have even the old logo in a Sans Serif font?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sktrdie 4y ago

Doesn't this mainly have to do with capitalism and a sort of "tragedy of the commons"? Why do supermarkets look so dull, boring and not at all aesthetically pleasing? Because they're super optimized for selling to the majority of customers. And for the majority of costumers probably aesthetics is not that important. I find this very clear also in European architecture of the ~1600. Some of the buildings all over Italy, Germany and England are these gorgeous pieces of art that would probably never have been built if the formula was "optimize the hell out of this so we can make short term profit".

Reason077 4y ago

Revolut, Facebook, and Pinterest’s new logos look “wrong” to me. The old ones look more natural and recognisable. The others from the tech group all look like natural evolutions of the logos. But perhaps it’s just that they changed long ago so there’s been plenty of time to get used to the new ones?

nickjj 4y ago

I remember a phase where a lot of tech companies tried to copy Amazon's smiling arrow into their existing brand's image. There was a time where DigitalOcean had a little smile line under a cloud on their home page years ago but they've removed it since then.

chiefalchemist 4y ago

Two words: Focus groups. Logos end up looking the same, for the same reason (e.g., autos) end up looking the same (i.e., color options). That said, what gets lost on logos is they are supposed to be an identity, not a badge for joining "the crowd." Instead, unique is abandoned for fashionable and/or trendy.

drivers99 4y ago
I’m currently (literally: I just switched apps from kindle to browsing HN moments ago) reading “Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned”, chapter 8, “Unchaining Innovation” and they are currently pointing out how consensus leads to a washed-out, bland sameness. A corollary that they wrote is that if you want to explore innovative ideas, you could look for something that splits expert opinions sharply.
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  Agreed. Funny enough I'm about to start "Different" by Youngme Moon. https://hbr.org/2010/05/why-being-different-makes-all https://hbr.org/2010/05/why-being-different-makes-all It's also why I believe "Zero to One" is essential. In short, move into a space of less and less competition. Obviously being the same prevents that. Btw, "Blue Ocean Shift" has the same msg. A bit long winded but in the end solid stuff.

modernerd 4y ago

These are just the word marks, not the full logos. I mocked up a comparison of the logos (Microsoft/Airbnb/Spotify/Pinterest rarely use their word marks without the accompanying icon) and they start to retain a _little_ more personality, at least for the tech comparison. https://imgur.com/a/v5yKD3o https://imgur.com/a/v5yKD3o It still seems fair to say they're more bland than past iterations, though. The theme is ”[optional icon] + sans serif word mark”, and it's a good example of “small m minimalism” — a kind of unthinking collective march toward an absence of detail — touched on by The Cultural Tutor in this thread: https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1538211892707086338 https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1538211892707086338 > Perhaps minimalist design is so prevalent because we no longer have anything to say. > You don't need me to explain what the Gothic cathedral says, for example. > But the skyscraper? It doesn't say anything, really. It's just... there. > And suddenly everything, everywhere starts to look the same. > Absolute neutrality. No detail. No identity. > What does that say about us?

TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
Architecture is a wierd one to pick on because it has function and form. For instance, the gothic cathedral doesn't actually need those two giant pillars out front, it is held up by it's cantilever. So we removed those. Also... Anyone else think it's very dark in here? How about we change out the engraved walls for windows? All this thick concrete and engravments don't allow us to build bigger than 8 stories. How about we change it out to a steel internal design and add more windows. It will allow more light, decrease weight and allow us to build higher. > Absolute neutrality. No detail. No identity. > What does that say about us? I disagree entirely with the basis of your argument. The amount of art in TV, Movies, Video games and overall graphic design has been on an incredible trajectory. What happened is that we started to understand our goals and mission. Adding two $400k gothic style pillars to the facade of a building that do absolutely nothing for thee structural soundness, or spend that 400k to add a bit more elegance to the rooms? pretentious and ostentatious or functional?
- ricardobeat 4y ago
  A square box of concrete can be functional. I don’t think that trade-off is real - can’t think of a single classical, beautiful building I’ve been to where the interior would benefit that much from a flat glass facade. In fact what comes to mind is Penn Station as a counter-example. Do you have any examples?

ravenstine 4y ago

We're in an economic era that mostly selects for safety. What's more safe than a plain sans-serif font? Business owners and C-level execs will believe they won't have to worry that a logo may be turning off a demographic because they think that plain letters will turn away no one or appeal to most. The day there's a serious economic downturn forcing the losers to close their doors, I would bet the newcomers will have more interesting logos. As an aside, there's a certain attitude among designer-types on imposing agreed upon "standards" designed to be ultra-inclusive and inoffensive. This is not only a cause for why so many logos have become minimalist, but why so many business websites are using nearly identical illustrations of abstract looking humanoids with atypical skin colors (look up "Alegria" design). It's global-homogenization driven by the politics in vogue. Related reading: "Here’s why Alegria is taking over tech world interfaces." https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/dont-worry-these-gangley-armed-cartoons-are-here-to-protect-you-from-big-tech/ https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/dont-worry-these-gangley-armed-... "CalArts Style And What You Need to Know About It" https://blog.displate.com/calarts-style/ https://blog.displate.com/calarts-style/

pizzathyme 4y ago

Counter example: Meta’s new logo. It’s an elegant infinity symbol + M + VR goggle shape

davidgerard 4y ago

Missing from this article: contacting any of the brands and designers and asking "why?" The "why" bit is entirely speculation.

phendrenad2 4y ago

For the same reason that if an open-source project hasn't had any github commits in a fee months, people on HN call it "abandoned". A new logo signals to people that the company is active, their products are being updated and evolved, and they're not stuck in the past. Imagine if a company reverted back to the logo you remember from your childhood. You'd think they were regressing backward also.

rav3ndust 4y ago

This isn't really "changing the look and logo", but I do miss the dessert-themed Android names. I thought they gave each release a bit of their own personality.