11 ms·

Geeking Out on the Logo

190 points by mikkelewis 13y ago

GuiA 13y ago
This is a brilliant move by Marissa Mayer. She knows from experience that having the best of the best (not only in engineering- but also in design, marketing, etc.) is necessary for your success in tech. Large tech companies depend on their employee's pet ideas and projects, the fact that they might be well known in some niche for some open source project or blog, and so on. In a way, if you're a large company that needs to constantly be on top of the latest trends and technologies (because if you're not, the same thing happens to you as happened to Myspace), you're no different than YCombinator - except that instead of wanting your recruits to start their startup, you want them to run a project for you internally (all of the famous Google projects that originated from 20% projects could have easily been startups of their own). Through these actions and posts, shes's showing how cool and fun Yahoo! is. Look, the CEO works on weekends with a small skunkworks team on designing logos, and nerds out on the subtle details like any cool designer would do. This is all about making Yahoo! a desirable place to work at again. I'm receiving way more emails from Yahoo! recruiters these days than Google or Apple recruiters, and they all have a common tone: "check us out, we're fun!". Similarly, all the small startup acquisitions have 2 goals: poach for talent, and get Techcrunch, HN, Engadget, etc. to talk about Yahoo. (the big acquisition we all talked about was about receiving a mature project internally as a way to make up for lost time) Of course it's not just this that will bring Yahoo! to victory, but those little things show how much strategy there is in Mayer's execution. EDIT: finally was in a situation where I could watch the video, and I only feel stronger about my point. Listen to the music (some dubstep/ibiza dance/feel good summer hit hybrid) - this is clearly destined to appeal to the 21 year old Stanford student looking for a new job, not the guy on HN who will criticize anything that makes it to the front page.
- stephencanon 13y ago
  I couldn't disagree more. To me, the new logo screams "design by committee". Its only virtue is that it addresses the worst flaws of the old logo. If we are to believe that how a company treats its logo is a reflection how it acts in all other regards (dubious at best), this would signal to a potential employee that Yahoo is an overly-cautious company that rejects big-picture rethinking and will only take on incremental adjustments to the status quo. A place where you cannot do your best work because you need to get buy in from 15 stakeholders for any significant change, and mediocre work that doesn't step on anyone's toes is the path to success. Me, I think that a logo is just a logo, and that a logo (and even a logo design process) is almost completely orthogonal to a company's ability to recruit and retain talent.
  - molecule 13y ago
    It also screams 'micromanagement.' > So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team: Bob Stohrer, Marc DeBartolomeis, Russ Khaydarov, and our intern Max Ma. We spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday designing the logo from start to finish, and we had a ton of fun weighing every minute detail. The Yahoo! logotype was important enough to involve the CEO of a $25B company, and frivolous enough to knock out in a weekend.
    - yuhong 13y ago
      I think Marissa Mayer was famous for things like this even at Google.
    - slg 13y ago
      >The Yahoo! logotype was important enough to involve the CEO of a $25B company, and frivolous enough to knock out in a weekend. I think that combination is probably accurate, but I don't think that is a bad thing. Mayer knows that something like this isn't really in the job description of a CEO. They don't pay her the big bucks to play around in Illustrator and it isn't a efficient use of her work day. But this is something she is interested in and something she thinks is important to the new image of Yahoo. So she dedicates a weekend (as off the clock as a Fortune 500 CEO can be?) to meet with the design team and get the work done. The move actually sounds pretty calculated and smart to me. It shows that she both knows her roll in the company but will still pay attention to the details.
    - hbbio 13y ago
      She should at least spend her week end with her child.
      - sho_hn 13y ago
        Children are surprisingly capable of not falling over dead or turning into monsters even if their parents spend a little time pursuing other interests now and then, you know. Also, be honest: Would that thought have even occured to you if Yahoo! had a male CEO? If not, why not?
- anologwintermut 13y ago
  Her experience and micromanagement apparently produced a logo that looks like it belongs on a web portal framed by IE6's forward thinking UI and appears to have been designed by someone who just figured out that illustrator could do 3d effects. So, so much for making users think the company has moved beyond its stagnant products. Which in a lot of ways it has, look at the Yahoo weather app for Android, the design is modern and integrates one of Yahoo's rather under leveraged properties: flickr. That was nice design. As to signals to the best of the best, this blog post confirms both that she will micro manager you and do design by committee simultaneously (a dubious distinction I don't think even Steve Balmer could achieve). And that's the signal if they like the logo.
  - orik 13y ago
    I disagree. I liked the new logo. :(
    - kingsidharth 13y ago
      <sarcasm>Very good argument, I must say. All design decisions must be made on the basis of likes and dislikes.</sarcasm>
      - gnarbarian 13y ago
        once you reach a certain point, design /is/ largely subjective.
      - sho_hn 13y ago
        "The bevel is bad" is not a very good argument, either. Why is the bevel bad? Explain it without making a reference to current flat trends.
        cschmidt 13y ago
        Traditional (i.e. Paul Rand era) logo design was trying to distill a company down to a minimal essence. Having bevels leaves in a decorative element that makes in non-minimal. That it should look good in 1 color is fundamental to traditional logo design. Yes, but it is going to be used on the screen 99% of the time, you say. But people who violate that rule end up with logos that are just a little bit tacky to a graphic designer.
- chavesn 13y ago
  Unfortunately, to me her post says different things: * "I work on weekends." (With a hint of "Just saying..."). * Designed in only two days. * This was personal. Talking about her love for design and "most of all" Illustrator (!?) says "It's at least partly about me." * Mixed messages. "We didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo." -- yet the logo ended up with a ton of essentially straight lines. And worst of all, the new logo seems to throw out too much of the old brand, misunderstand modern design trends and logo portability (logos with depth still need to be interesting when flat), and try too hard to have weight and impact without really achieving it. For example, the saturation of the purple has been pumped up till it almost hurts your eyes. Like TV sets at Best Buy, it's attention grabbing, but it's not desirable in the long term.
  - wyclif 13y ago
    The bevel is a bad move, and looks out of place. Poor design choice. Most of the other decisions were fine.
    - pedalpete 13y ago
      I agree about the bevel. The world goes flat, but Yahoo adds texture. It is too soon to be retro-cool. Though, it may stand out amongst all the flat logo designs, I wonder if it will stand out looking old, or just be more noticeable.
      - sp332 13y ago
        Flat may be "in", but that doesn't mean literally every single thing has to be flat, or that it's the best idea for Yahoo.
- huhtenberg 13y ago
  > She knows from experience that having the best of the best is necessary for your success in tech This is simply not true. There is a metric ton of examples of "success in tech" WITHOUT "having the best of the best". Microsoft would be the prime example. Twitter - another.
  - GuiA 13y ago
    Twitter the 900 person corporation has an extremely solid team that has released countless great open source projects and keeps innovating. Microsoft the hot late 80s/90s company was where the best of the best went. Why do you think Spolsky started his career there right out of college?
    - kamaal 13y ago
      Solid teams and people get to be named solid only after they perform. You are looking at those companies after they won, but when they started and with no proven credentials against them I doubt you would have the same view about them then.
    - huhtenberg 13y ago
      > Twitter the 900 person corporation That's now. Look back to their FailWhale period. They certainly didn't have "best of the best", yet they did succeed. Though I guess you can count Arrington's constant cheer-leading as the best of marketing... but it'd still be a stretch. > Why do you think Spolsky started his career there right out of college? Because of their stock option program, why else. But that's irrelevant. Microsoft did not succeed because they had "best of the best", but because of their underhanded sales and customer entrapment tactics. Point being the company don't need "best of the best" to succeed. It's often sufficient, but it's certainly not necessary.
  - frozenport 13y ago
    When I think about software I think about C++. Microsoft's core teams are built from the best of the best. For example their compiler and even some Windows internals (somebody should tell Linus about how a driver works :-) ). Its the other thousands on the periphery that are approaching mediocrity. Although still quite profitable. If MS was a Java fun house like Yahoo, they would have tanked long ago.
- weland 13y ago
  I beg to differ. > Through these actions and posts, shes's showing how cool and fun Yahoo! is. Look, the CEO works on weekends with a small skunkworks team on designing logos, and nerds out on the subtle details like any cool designer would do. Through these actions and posts, she looks like someone I wouldn't want to work with, or for. I avoid people who claim "I am not X, but I know enough to be dangerous" like the plague they are. I've had my share of "I am not an engineer, but I know enough to be dangerous"; they're the people who think you used two decoupling caps in parallel because you couldn't find one with the right value, or who are always there to help you with an obvious and useless tip when you're debugging a program -- and then you spend five minutes explaining them why they're not even close to the problem (partly because they used some words that mean something different than what they thought they mean). And take another fifteen to gather back your focus, as a bonus. Second, if I had some work to do, the last thing I'd want is the CEO in my room. Yahoo looks like a big company, don't they have some CEO-ing to do? When you decide you want to make a career out of pushing papers and borderline lying to investors, stick to it. Third, having the CEO bug you and working weekends is a really low, indecent form of manipulation. Someone who's designs stuff for Yahoo is probably experienced enough to have gone past the "I have to work weekends to impress my boss and jumpstart my career" phase. The dudes probably had families to spend time with (or bars to hit and get drunk over the grudge of their loneliness, whatever). Let them go home, you can brag to the press about what a workaholic culture your company has without actually keeping your employees at work over the weekend. Sure, if the atmosphere is fun enough, it may seem like you're having fun and playing, but this doesn't avoid the burnout, it just makes its settling less painful. > finally was in a situation where I could watch the video, and I only feel stronger about my point. Listen to the music (some dubstep/ibiza dance/feel good summer hit hybrid) - this is clearly destined to appeal to the 21 year old Stanford student looking for a new job, not the guy on HN who will criticize anything that makes it to the front page. This is clearly destined to appeal to the ambitious, 21-year hipster who wants to be a corporate drone but with style, you know, like he's not a corporate drone. Job-desperate, loan-starved young graduates who want to subscribe to the 70 hours a week -- but oh so fun -- culture. I don't think they are to be condemned (we were all pretty stupid when we were 21), but someone who perpetuates this culture isn't to be admired and certainly not made an example of, not among tech professionals anyway. Among Wall Street investors? Sure, who the hell wouldn't admire someone who can make people work over weekends and proud of it. Also -- at the risk of doing a sexist no-no -- I can't help but wonder how someone like, say, Steve Ballmer, which I guess no one around here wants to do, would have been treated if he were the one treating his employees like this -- micromanaging exactly the people you shouldn't micromanage (i.e. the creative team), over a weekend, then bragging about how hip it is. Breathing life into a company is a difficult task, and Marissa Mayer seems to be trying to do exactly that. Initial success is obviously to be applauded, but don't be overly enthusiastic. The smith's fire will eat through the coals and make the iron unworkable if you overwork the bellows.
- petercooper 13y ago
  This is a brilliant move by Marissa Mayer. In some ways, but I think Yahoo! has essentially proven their brand is so weak that it can be represented by a new poorly thought out design every day and, well, no-one cares. If Apple, McDonald's or Coca Cola did something similar, they'd be committing brand suicide and attracting a lot of flak, but with Yahoo it's just "Oh well, another new Yahoo logo, who cares?"
  - goblin89 13y ago
    > If Apple, McDonald's or Coca Cola did something similar, they'd be committing brand suicide and attracting a lot of flak I remember Apple's iOS 7 Video, where some guy was geeking out about the grid they've designed and are using for everything, from icons to UI layout. > but with Yahoo it's just "Oh well, another new Yahoo logo, who cares?" To be fair, Yahoo didn't change logo for 18 years, according to the OP. It's pretty big news.
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  This might be true if the logo were actually good, but it's not. It looks like it was designed by a machine.
- DoubleMalt 13y ago
  I disagree. The result is a brilliant demonstration on why design by committee is bad.
- Okvivi 13y ago
  I couldn't agree more. What I feel a lot of people are missing here is that Marissa's making Yahoo a place where good engineers want to work: where empowered smart people can make a difference in a scrappy way.
tonystubblebine 13y ago
I've been trying to evaluate this logo under the assumption that the people who are working at Yahoo are smarter than me and have more information than me. My personal reaction is that I hate the bevel. Hate. I was rooting for #10, which is a simplified and modernized version of their old logo. But. I'm not a Yahoo user. Period. The bevel immediately made me think of some brands you'd find on sale at Macy's, which mainstream America associates with quality, but which my artisanal-y brainwashed brain thinks of as mass produced junk. Imagine for a second that Yahoo has research showing normal people reacting to this logo with words like luxury and high-class. If that's the case, then Yahoo just pulled an epic branding end run. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are fighting to be the flattest, plainest, more boring brands. Then Yahoo stepped up and said, "Yo. Let's be fabulous together!" In the old days, Yahoo's skunkworks Brickhouse division had posters in their break room titled "Know your competition" with pictures of Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin. Trying to copy the other tech giants was (one of) Yahoo's problems because the Yahoo teams couldn't celebrate what they were actually doing well. The contrarian in me salutes Yahoo for this crazy, out of left field, gaudy, off-trend logo. Genius.
- avb 13y ago
  About the bevel... I hate it too. The only thing I can come up with is that someone, probably Mayer, thinks it's a hipster cool throwback to the late '90s when everyone was using Photoshop's default bevel and emboss filters like there was no tomorrow.
- derefr 13y ago
  I feel like, if Meyer had been at this ten years ago, Yahoo would have just finished purchasing MySpace--Tumblr is just the modern-day equivalent. It's that kind of aesthetic, and that kind of audience, that they're reaching for here. (Meyer's own blog theme is a great example!)
- bowlofpetunias 13y ago
  Being Dutch, I associate the bevel with "American bad taste". Design is sacred here, logo design doubly so. This would be ridiculed.
usaphp 13y ago
I like how marketing people try to come up with explanation of BS things they do...
- LAMike 13y ago
  You can justify almost anything in design, it's so subjective and the person who gets paid the most always has the final say on what's "right" (except for a few unicorns that allow they're designers ultimte freedom)
machbio 13y ago
Until today, I believed Marrisa Mayer was all hype... she is a lady of attention to details - yahoo needs no other person her at this moment.. About the Logo, it seems so 90s.. normal people will be bored and you cannot explain the hyperbole's and the geometrical symmetry of the logo.. Yahoo needed a story that common man could understand - they have missed the train by designing a very technical logo.. I may be wrong, yahoo needs to attract technical people.. or I may be right with all the business happening at the consumer side.. they needed to balance - but they failed to do it..
- atmosx 13y ago
  > [...] they have missed the train by designing a very technical logo.. I may be wrong [...] You may be correct though. What does the LOGO has to do with what Yahoo! will achieve is beyond me. I like logo stories: Makes you think that if Nike didn't had the Just do it logo, it would have failed (and some kids in Eastern Asia wouldn't have to work their ass out for my Nikes).
creativityland 13y ago
Is it just me or her tumblr is timing out frequently with packet drops.
bjz_ 13y ago
It's great that she's actually using tumblr. It shows that she's likes her product enough to use it herself.
- MisterBastahrd 13y ago
  Or that she has to justify a billion dollar purchase to her shareholders and using it is one way to do so.
nl 13y ago
That Yahoo! brand, as represented by their logo must be quite an asset given how it is all over their CEO's blog as well as their corporate blog[1]. Ironically their corporate blog isn't loading at the moment because http://ajax.googleapis.com http://ajax.googleapis.com isn't responding. (Edit: - seems ok now) [1] http://yahoo.tumblr.com/ http://yahoo.tumblr.com/
nodesocket 13y ago
Watching this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agRxG-X_TEQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agRxG-X_TEQ The pure typeface design is truely amazing and beautiful. The bevel and depth completely ruin the entire logo though. Yahoo should have gone with a flat design and a solid fill of their trademark purple color and called it quits.
namank 13y ago
Well, I like the bevel. It may not be flat but it does an excellent job in the context it's supposed to be used in - go check out yahoo.com. That favicon could definitely be reworked though.
- panacea 13y ago
  The favicon hasn't been updated yet.
gscott 13y ago
I hate the bevel but looking at it on the Yahoo website when the logo is crushed into the top right corner the bevel makes it pop out a little more and be more noticable when it is that small the bevel pretty much disappears.
qq66 13y ago
Couldn't she get her full name as a Tumblr username?
- fomojola 13y ago
  Its even odder: she did get her full name (http://marissamayer.tumblr.com/ http://marissamayer.tumblr.com/). However, it includes a comment that points to http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/ http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/ (it says Please see marissamayr.tumblr.com for my blog.). No autoredirect, no link nothing. Quite odd.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - molecule 13y ago
    Flickr Tumblr Mayr
    - Pitarou 13y ago
      Yuckir and yuckir.
    - chavesn 13y ago
      So much more makes sense now, like why I feel like their use of Tumblr for the corporate blog is purely perfunctory.
40 13y ago
Before reading this I felt the logo resembled the Google logo quite a bit in terms of the complexity of the font and the use of bevels, and felt like Marissa was involved and wanted to go for a familiar feel to that of Google. I feel its more likely after reading this considering who level in input.
deleted 13y ago
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easytiger 13y ago
Geeking out. Another phrase that makes me want to bite my arm off.
- saint-loup 13y ago
  And yet, Neal Stephenson made an interesting distinction between "geeking out" and "vegging out": "To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal - and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?...
- mason240 13y ago
  Anyone that has to use the words "geek" or "nerd" to describe themselves or what they are doing are neither. If you are a geek or nerd, you just are. You don't have to convince other people of it.
- slantyyz 13y ago
  Geeking out is a bit of a strange phrase to use with the logo. One can geek out on the details of the design, but the big problem (for me) with the logo aren't the details, it's the emotion. While I'm sure I'll get used to the new design, it leaves me emotionally empty. I very much preferred the old one. This might be contrary to what a lot of people here are saying -- I'm not sure adding a professional designer to the group would have made a difference. You need to add the right designer. Not all designers are equipped to work in those situations, i.e., one who can deal with the huge personalities and egos of those on the redesign committee. And the worst egos in the room aren't always the CEO, they can often be the creative director types.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
Well done - for a multi billion dollar company, spending a weekend on your logo is about the right ratio of time to value. Looks good enough to be acceptable, can be reused in all the sub projects. Done, now lets get on with real product improvements. Move on folks, nothing exciting to see here
johnohara 13y ago
Focusing on the logo is a detraction from the vast array of truly positive changes that have been implemented over the past 6 months -- by some very talented teams I might add. No question the whole site is on the move. To where or what, I dunno. But my interest is piqued and the overall experience feels tighter. If that makes sense.
BIair 13y ago
It's obvious they missed the easiest way to simplify and modernize the logo... Drop the exclamation mark! Remember when Marissa had the TM removed? Nothing screams 90s more than an exclamation. It takes courage to innovate. Ford, "They wanted a faster horse". Jobs, "They wanted a phone with a physical keyboard". Yahoo? The "new" logo doesn't signify that anything has changed.
vacri 13y ago
First impressions for me were "They've sterilised the logo!". Now it looks so corporate and planned... ... and I actually laughed when I read "Our last move was to tilt the exclamation point by 9 degrees, just to add a bit of whimsy".
- jakejake 13y ago
  It looks like a logo that I would create. My logo creation technique involves typing out the brand name, then selecting whichever stock font installed on my machine most strikes my fancy. Perhaps the ratios of the bevels and font size contain some hilarious, hidden inside joke for mathematicians which I do not understand.
  - w0utert 13y ago
    Don't forget to add some bevel or shadow, it would be a waste do let your dangerous Illustrator skills go to waste... :-/
ngoel36 13y ago
If the logo hadn't changed in 18 years, what exactly had this logo design team of 4 been up to for so long?
- forgingahead 13y ago
  Working from home of course
  - reustle 13y ago
    Not anymore!
- pearjuice 13y ago
  Heh, that is what I thought too. Maybe for geocities?
- colmvp 13y ago
  Other design jobs for Yahoo properties? Or maybe they weren't part of the team beforehand? It's not like designers just sit there doing one thing forever.
- randyrand 13y ago
  Cant tell if this was sarcasm but it is obviously a one time team created just for the purpose of redesigning the logo.
obilgic 13y ago
time you spent on something != quality of the result
dxhdr 13y ago
Are they A/B testing the logo without the exclamation? About one out of 10 times I load yahoo.com the little animated ! never happens and the logo is left without the exclamation. Could just be bad code, though.
Pitarou 13y ago
Like the form. Hate the bevelling. Am I just following the braying "flat is the new shiny-lickable" herd here?
Uchikoma 13y ago
Love the boldness. Going against flat is bold - and ugly. It reminds me of a book I had in the 90s which showed 5-click Photoshop tricks, there was a golden bevel trick in there (and marble, and shadows, and stamping).
atmosx 13y ago
Seriously, 31 comments about (a really mediocre if you ask me) LoGo? I'd only wanted to know how did it cost, out of curiosity... Because at eLance you can get a better one at 75USD without ruining a weekend (not joking).
- mitchellbryson 13y ago
  I think you should publish this brilliant $75 logo for us to critique :)
ricardobeat 13y ago
The CEO and an intern redesign a $25b company's logo during the weekend. That's news! Minor nitpick: the logo is looking like a 1-bit alpha GIF on Chrome, due to the downsizing: http://cl.ly/image/183U1t0l1u3e http://cl.ly/image/183U1t0l1u3e (FF on the left)
SolarUpNote 13y ago
Nice. I like this one much better than the other 30 choices they presented to users. *actually I didn't watch the video all the way to the end where it shows the bevel. Yuck. Why?
- elliottcarlson 13y ago
  I'll say this again and specifically on this comment since it spells out "30 choices" while others just hint at it - There were no 30 choices. This was always the final logo. The 30 prior "logos" were a "whimsical" way of getting users used to the idea of change. None of those 30 logos were done seriously...
capex 13y ago
Without thinking about who did this, the bevel is plainly ugly. I wonder if no one in the entire design team could tell this to Marissa Mayer?
- colmvp 13y ago
  Uh yeah I'm sure they did. Except who do you think gets the final say in the decision? Hint: It's not the designers.
ozi 13y ago
Looks like they spent more time making a video about the logo than the new logo itself.
bsaul 13y ago
Does anyone else here thinks the logo is much more feminine ? It's more elegant, and the mix on bold and thin lines inside the letters reminds me a bit of fashion magazine logos ( think vogue).
- mitchellbryson 13y ago
  Yes very much so. I first thought it would look better on a cosmetic product, without the exclamation point. The Clinique branch has similar "scallops" and no straight edges... http://bit.ly/161aoLo http://bit.ly/161aoLo
- Pxtl 13y ago
  That's my reaction as well. The person who described it as "Macy's" was spot on. My immediate reaction when looking at it is a department-store makeup counter. Which is good branding, considering how one of Yahoo's strongest points is that they go after female market segments that geek-driven companies often fail to capture. They're chasing women. Not just women, but decidedly non-geeky women. Remember that Yahoo's logo was originally red, not purple.
dsirijus 13y ago
I have a feeling that final results - people like the logo most similar to the old one - were anticipated at yahoo, and entire logo testing situation "fabricated" to state "you liked us all this time, and we're just reminding you of that".
yardie 13y ago
> I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous :) May I present the new Steve Jobs, everyone.
wellboy 13y ago
This seems to be really well intended, but this is the outcome when you put a data-geek into charge of design instead of a true artist. If they had just launched a design contest on a freelancer, they would have had a multiple times better results. Why not try a golden-yellow "Y" on a blue background for instance. Think different, play with the colors. Design has to come from the heart and really reflect the personality of the company and show the LOVE! This yahoo logo still looks very stoic and still like from the 90s, urgs. Designing is simply not a data-driven approach, it is the complete opposite.
- deleted 13y ago
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appplemac 13y ago
Is that Empire of the Sun?
- timack 13y ago
  Yep, track is called 'Alive' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPKAwJKGSDc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPKAwJKGSDc]
brownbat 13y ago
> We didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo. Straight lines don’t exist in the human form and are extremely rare in nature, so the human touch in the logo is that all the lines and forms all have at least a slight curve. This reminds me of the design team that tilted the Pepsi logo 10 degrees to show Pepsi was "leaning towards the future." [1] Is there a rule that says you can't run a company if you see through these sort of lines as utterly laughable? 1. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42740470/pepsis-nonsensical-logo-redesign-document-1-million-for-this/ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42740470/pepsis-nonse...
- peterjs 13y ago
  The good (well...) news is that the curved lines can't even be seen, when the logo is shrinked :)
  - brownbat 13y ago
    As a corollary, that must look unnatural and dehumanizing. :)
- marknutter 13y ago
  I'll never be able to unsee this: http://cdn.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/pepsi-fat-man-500x385.jpg http://cdn.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2...
rmrfrmrf 13y ago
Several annoyances here: 1. Showing hand-drawn versions of your logo in what clearly is set in hardly-modified Optima (a typeface designed way back in the 1950s) makes me cringe. Why show fake process work? 2. No one is impressed when the manager does the job of their employees. For one, it implies that they don't trust their employees, and secondly, it makes the job of designers look like a fun hobby that anyone can get into. The result is exactly what happened here: an utterly boring logo redesign that looks just-polished-enough to make people think that Marissa Mayer is some kind of genius, yet simple enough to make people think that true designers bring no value to the table. 3. The whole 30 days of logos schtick was awful. Good artists know that the worst thing you can do for yourself is show too much of your own work. After a while, everything looks same-y and the weaknesses begin to become more apparent. The whole concept reeks of indecision and a pray-to-God moment that one of the logos would have such a huge outpouring of support that the Yahoo! team wouldn't have to make up their own minds on a vision. 4. The bevel isn't even customized. It's a preset Adobe effect. Pretending like the Y shape in the bevel was intentional is horseshit and obviously a desperate attempt to give some sort of conceptual significance to what is otherwise a completely forgettable design.
- meerita 13y ago
  Totally right. That's why the design by consensus is always wrong. The brand is now biased. MM had a reputation of being intrusive even on silly details making the design process horrible and with crappy results. From this I remember various things you may remember too: 1. The Google favicon. They did thousands and the one they choosed was crappiest one. They had to change it later. 2. The Google favicon with blue. Also, they did silly tests. Now that thing is gone. I think this post resumes it well http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
andyjohnson0 13y ago
I'm not a designer and know nothing about logo design, so let me ask: Is there an objective way to evaluate a piece of design such as this new logo? Or does it just come down to personal like/dislike?
- unwind 13y ago
  I'm sure there can be, somehow tying together intricate details how how our brains process visual data and how various associations are triggered. I'm pretty sure no such process exists today though, which (at least to me) makes various statements that sound as if they were part of such an objective evaluation sound so hilarious. Note: I have nothing but respect for the skills of good graphic designers, but it's just very strange to hear some of the justications made. My favorite regarding this logo was from the second bullet: We preferred letters that had thicker and thinner strokes - conveying the subjective and editorial nature of some of what we do. What does that mean? Am I supposed to look at the logo, and somehow conclude "ah, it uses both thin and thick strokes, naturally that is because Yahoo are sometimes subjective, sometimes they're editorial". Is "editorial" even the opposite of "subjective"?! Hilarious.
- snom380 13y ago
  Well, what you can do is ask people who have worked with logo design, won awards for logo design etc. Of course, these people may be biased, but at least they have more experience in evaluating logos than others. So in general, if many of them like it there's a good chance it's actually good. The other thing you can do is to look back. In 10, 20 years, it might be more obvious whether a logo was successful or not. But again, that may be influenced by the success of the company. I think saying that it all comes down to personal taste is bit misleading, because that personal taste is generally shared by a large part of the population.
  - andyjohnson0 13y ago
    "Well, what you can do is ask people who have worked with logo design, won awards for logo design etc." "Of course, these people may be biased, but at least they have more experience in evaluating logos than others" This just raises the question of how these experts evaluate a logo. I understand that academic art criticism [1] has developed frameworks for evaluating works of art - genre, cultural impact, relationship to preceding works, etc. But a logo isn't art - it is almost entirely functional and used for (mundane?) concerns like brand identity. I can appreciate that some logs have existed for long enough that they have a historical context (e.g. Coca-Cola) but I don't see how this helps evaluate its primary purpose. Any graphic designers want to comment? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_criticism
tomelders 13y ago
I've designed a few logos in my time. All I see here is post-rationalisation, the last bastion of the cowboy designer trying to justify their costs.
andrelaszlo 13y ago
http://i.imgur.com/qv1WDrS.png http://i.imgur.com/qv1WDrS.png Anything will be better than this. My guess is that they're fully aware that the bevel makes a lot of people think of the 90's. To me, the message is "stability" and "experience".
georgemcbay 13y ago
So, yeah, with all of this media around the new Yahoo I decided to attempt to re-embrace Flickr as a place to host photos. My old Yahoo email address account was long since gone, so I tried to sign up for a new account. On entering my Google Voice phone number (which I use as my official number everywhere, because it makes it way easier for me to switch carriers without worrying about number porting) as my mobile number their verification routine informed me it wasn't a valid mobile number... STRIKE 1. So I get past that by entering my current actual cellphone number (which, again, I consider 'unofficial' since it may change 6 months or a year from now whereas my Google Voice number will not), which I had to go look up because I did not even know what it was... Annoying to have to do that, but not the end of the world. I start uploading a set of 70 full sized photos to my first 'set' on Flickr over my not-so-fast DSL line. About an hour in to the upload, flickr informs me my login has timed out and the upload can't continue. Worse, not only did my overall upload not complete, but NONE of the photos in that upload show in my account despite the fact that the overall upload was about 50% done. STRIKE 2 through 71. Yeah, nice-ish logo, even with the bevels, but until Yahoo fixes their shit, who cares? My impression of the company is actually much worse now than it was a couple hours ago when I was pretty much neutral on them. Needless to say my flickr experiment is over and I'm not likely to be signing up for any Yahoo services anytime soon.
meerita 13y ago
Design by consensus = bad, really bad. If the CEO wears the designer boot and conditions the final art I think it's one of the biggest mistakes they will do. Right now, that logo to me looks like more or less those logos you can find on logotypes websites for 30 dollars. The logo on smaller sizes looks pretty crap. Just check it. The logo is only interesting on certain situations, that's why a good logo isn't just drop some non-straight lines in illustrator on a weekend. Bezels? That's so 90's.
rrrrtttt 13y ago
That Vogue girl is doing to Yahoo on behalf of Google what Stephen Elop did to Nokia on behalf of Microsoft.
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arrrr 13y ago
It seems weird to me that they went through so much trouble focusing on tiny details and then making the logo on the homepage so small that you can barely see them. I'm pretty ignorant of design theory though - can anyone recommend any reading materials (general, logo specific or other) that would provide a good introduction?
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sfjailbird 13y ago
The main problem with this logo is that it sends conflicting messages. On one hand it wants to be funky (differently sized letters, tilted exclamation mark), but on the other it oozes conservative, with its square and straight typeface and lack of color. Overall, 'conservative' clearly beats out 'funky', with the few creative touches clobbered into submission. The larger Y and O, supposed to add dynamism and 'fun', are not different enough to pop and convey that idea. This is particularly jarring with the larger O next to the smaller one at the end - only different enough to confuse, not to send a message. What's worse is the execution is poor and sloppy. It has no synergy. Notice the horizontal lines in the A and the H at strange 'close-but-not-equal' levels, neither tying into anything else in the logo. The flat foot of the larger Y sets one baseline, but the flat feet of the A and H define another, neither being referenced anywhere else in the logo. Perhaps I just don't get it. Maybe the amateurism of it is the message, in which case it comes through loud and clear.
dkhenry 13y ago
Its not a logo I would have made, but its different and it doesn't look _bad_. I appreciate the explanation she gave about the different aesthetics that went into it and how they tried to give it some deeper meaning then just a font on a white background.
normloman 13y ago
Anticlimactic. It's like their old logo, only more boring. Why does Yahoo exist?
GotNothing 13y ago
It looks like it should be on a bottle of perfume.
mapleoin 13y ago
The current animated, 3d logo on the frontpage reminds me of BonziBuddy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy
Keyframe 13y ago
Logo is nice, it feels more modern. Chiseled bevel is a matter of opinion and would probably get removed on smaller scales (hopefully). I'd like to see them redesign their front page though. It's incoherent.
garg 13y ago
I love the fact that the CEO and an intern can work together on a project at Yahoo.
samuelfine 13y ago
I'd like to point out, for the record, that this "logo design team" consisted of: - CEO - SVP of "Brand Creative" - VP, Creative Director - Someone who doesn't seem to exist online, outside of articles about this new logo - An intern You'll notice a distinct lack of professional designers in that list. Apparently this 10 billion dollar brand wasn't important enough to put in the hands of, you know, experts. Instead, they spent a weekend (ONE WEEKEND) "geeking out" over it. Which is definitely the best way to design a global brand. This is micromanagement at its very worst, and is an insult to the craft of design.
- gersonaya 13y ago
  Fully agreed.
- tomelders 13y ago
  Hmmm, while I agree with the sentiment, I don't think it's as simple as putting it in the hands of a "professional". Simply picking the right designer is something that requires an inordinate amount of taste to start with. People with no taste or feel for design stand a strong chance of picking a poor designer (or agency). I'll cite Wolf Olins here as my example. Not only is it clear that no one in Wolf Olins seems to have taste or a feel for design, their clients don't seem to have it either. So there's a feedback loop of affirmation as people with no taste reward other people with no taste, which in turns makes other people with no taste think those other people with no taste have taste because all the people they know that they think have taste think those other people have taste. Meanwhile, the actual people with taste are watching from the sidelines, because they've marginalised themselves by being honest about what is good design and what is bad design, but with a passion that comes across as pedantry and rudeness. So they watch in despair as the whole debacle unfolds in front of them, growing ever more frustrated which serves only to marginalise them even more. While I'm here... I think almost everything Wolf Olins churns out is sub-stadard slop barely worthy of a fist year national diploma students portfolio. Their work has neither grace, finesse, or charm. It's all cack-handed indulgent arse-gravy of the highest order dipped in a seemingly bottomless ocean of post-rationalisation and I can not believe that people keep lapping it up. It's rank amateur. Their work stinks like shit and I hate them for it. And there I go, proving my point about why no-one listens to designers.
general_failure 13y ago
Wow, the comments here about working on weekends are shocking. Rome wasn't built in a day and companies aren't built with 9-5 jobs. This is sad and hypocrite. Every start up I know works hard, long and hacker news should know better
bernardom 13y ago
Other than GuiA's (currently-on-top) comment, almost everything I've read here is disgustingly negative. "She's a micromanager, she should be 'CEOing' instead of designing, she's a terrible designer, she should spend time with her kids (!!), she has hubris to say she can design something, it's all about her, she's destroying the craft of design, the wafts of Denning - Krugerism are pluming out." I just... come on, people!
grexi 13y ago
Let's give some feedback about the logo here: http://usersnap.com/yahoologoreview http://usersnap.com/yahoologoreview I don't like it.

190 points by mikkelewis 13y ago

GuiA 13y ago

This is a brilliant move by Marissa Mayer. She knows from experience that having the best of the best (not only in engineering- but also in design, marketing, etc.) is necessary for your success in tech. Large tech companies depend on their employee's pet ideas and projects, the fact that they might be well known in some niche for some open source project or blog, and so on. In a way, if you're a large company that needs to constantly be on top of the latest trends and technologies (because if you're not, the same thing happens to you as happened to Myspace), you're no different than YCombinator - except that instead of wanting your recruits to start their startup, you want them to run a project for you internally (all of the famous Google projects that originated from 20% projects could have easily been startups of their own). Through these actions and posts, shes's showing how cool and fun Yahoo! is. Look, the CEO works on weekends with a small skunkworks team on designing logos, and nerds out on the subtle details like any cool designer would do. This is all about making Yahoo! a desirable place to work at again. I'm receiving way more emails from Yahoo! recruiters these days than Google or Apple recruiters, and they all have a common tone: "check us out, we're fun!". Similarly, all the small startup acquisitions have 2 goals: poach for talent, and get Techcrunch, HN, Engadget, etc. to talk about Yahoo. (the big acquisition we all talked about was about receiving a mature project internally as a way to make up for lost time) Of course it's not just this that will bring Yahoo! to victory, but those little things show how much strategy there is in Mayer's execution. EDIT: finally was in a situation where I could watch the video, and I only feel stronger about my point. Listen to the music (some dubstep/ibiza dance/feel good summer hit hybrid) - this is clearly destined to appeal to the 21 year old Stanford student looking for a new job, not the guy on HN who will criticize anything that makes it to the front page.

stephencanon 13y ago
I couldn't disagree more. To me, the new logo screams "design by committee". Its only virtue is that it addresses the worst flaws of the old logo. If we are to believe that how a company treats its logo is a reflection how it acts in all other regards (dubious at best), this would signal to a potential employee that Yahoo is an overly-cautious company that rejects big-picture rethinking and will only take on incremental adjustments to the status quo. A place where you cannot do your best work because you need to get buy in from 15 stakeholders for any significant change, and mediocre work that doesn't step on anyone's toes is the path to success. Me, I think that a logo is just a logo, and that a logo (and even a logo design process) is almost completely orthogonal to a company's ability to recruit and retain talent.
- molecule 13y ago
  It also screams 'micromanagement.' > So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team: Bob Stohrer, Marc DeBartolomeis, Russ Khaydarov, and our intern Max Ma. We spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday designing the logo from start to finish, and we had a ton of fun weighing every minute detail. The Yahoo! logotype was important enough to involve the CEO of a $25B company, and frivolous enough to knock out in a weekend.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    I think Marissa Mayer was famous for things like this even at Google.
  - slg 13y ago
    >The Yahoo! logotype was important enough to involve the CEO of a $25B company, and frivolous enough to knock out in a weekend. I think that combination is probably accurate, but I don't think that is a bad thing. Mayer knows that something like this isn't really in the job description of a CEO. They don't pay her the big bucks to play around in Illustrator and it isn't a efficient use of her work day. But this is something she is interested in and something she thinks is important to the new image of Yahoo. So she dedicates a weekend (as off the clock as a Fortune 500 CEO can be?) to meet with the design team and get the work done. The move actually sounds pretty calculated and smart to me. It shows that she both knows her roll in the company but will still pay attention to the details.
  - hbbio 13y ago
    She should at least spend her week end with her child.
    - sho_hn 13y ago
      Children are surprisingly capable of not falling over dead or turning into monsters even if their parents spend a little time pursuing other interests now and then, you know. Also, be honest: Would that thought have even occured to you if Yahoo! had a male CEO? If not, why not?
anologwintermut 13y ago
Her experience and micromanagement apparently produced a logo that looks like it belongs on a web portal framed by IE6's forward thinking UI and appears to have been designed by someone who just figured out that illustrator could do 3d effects. So, so much for making users think the company has moved beyond its stagnant products. Which in a lot of ways it has, look at the Yahoo weather app for Android, the design is modern and integrates one of Yahoo's rather under leveraged properties: flickr. That was nice design. As to signals to the best of the best, this blog post confirms both that she will micro manager you and do design by committee simultaneously (a dubious distinction I don't think even Steve Balmer could achieve). And that's the signal if they like the logo.
- orik 13y ago
  I disagree. I liked the new logo. :(
  - kingsidharth 13y ago
    <sarcasm>Very good argument, I must say. All design decisions must be made on the basis of likes and dislikes.</sarcasm>
    - gnarbarian 13y ago
      once you reach a certain point, design /is/ largely subjective.
    - sho_hn 13y ago
      "The bevel is bad" is not a very good argument, either. Why is the bevel bad? Explain it without making a reference to current flat trends.
      - cschmidt 13y ago
        Traditional (i.e. Paul Rand era) logo design was trying to distill a company down to a minimal essence. Having bevels leaves in a decorative element that makes in non-minimal. That it should look good in 1 color is fundamental to traditional logo design. Yes, but it is going to be used on the screen 99% of the time, you say. But people who violate that rule end up with logos that are just a little bit tacky to a graphic designer.
chavesn 13y ago
Unfortunately, to me her post says different things: * "I work on weekends." (With a hint of "Just saying..."). * Designed in only two days. * This was personal. Talking about her love for design and "most of all" Illustrator (!?) says "It's at least partly about me." * Mixed messages. "We didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo." -- yet the logo ended up with a ton of essentially straight lines. And worst of all, the new logo seems to throw out too much of the old brand, misunderstand modern design trends and logo portability (logos with depth still need to be interesting when flat), and try too hard to have weight and impact without really achieving it. For example, the saturation of the purple has been pumped up till it almost hurts your eyes. Like TV sets at Best Buy, it's attention grabbing, but it's not desirable in the long term.
- wyclif 13y ago
  The bevel is a bad move, and looks out of place. Poor design choice. Most of the other decisions were fine.
  - pedalpete 13y ago
    I agree about the bevel. The world goes flat, but Yahoo adds texture. It is too soon to be retro-cool. Though, it may stand out amongst all the flat logo designs, I wonder if it will stand out looking old, or just be more noticeable.
    - sp332 13y ago
      Flat may be "in", but that doesn't mean literally every single thing has to be flat, or that it's the best idea for Yahoo.
huhtenberg 13y ago
> She knows from experience that having the best of the best is necessary for your success in tech This is simply not true. There is a metric ton of examples of "success in tech" WITHOUT "having the best of the best". Microsoft would be the prime example. Twitter - another.
- GuiA 13y ago
  Twitter the 900 person corporation has an extremely solid team that has released countless great open source projects and keeps innovating. Microsoft the hot late 80s/90s company was where the best of the best went. Why do you think Spolsky started his career there right out of college?
  - kamaal 13y ago
    Solid teams and people get to be named solid only after they perform. You are looking at those companies after they won, but when they started and with no proven credentials against them I doubt you would have the same view about them then.
  - huhtenberg 13y ago
    > Twitter the 900 person corporation That's now. Look back to their FailWhale period. They certainly didn't have "best of the best", yet they did succeed. Though I guess you can count Arrington's constant cheer-leading as the best of marketing... but it'd still be a stretch. > Why do you think Spolsky started his career there right out of college? Because of their stock option program, why else. But that's irrelevant. Microsoft did not succeed because they had "best of the best", but because of their underhanded sales and customer entrapment tactics. Point being the company don't need "best of the best" to succeed. It's often sufficient, but it's certainly not necessary.
- frozenport 13y ago
  When I think about software I think about C++. Microsoft's core teams are built from the best of the best. For example their compiler and even some Windows internals (somebody should tell Linus about how a driver works :-) ). Its the other thousands on the periphery that are approaching mediocrity. Although still quite profitable. If MS was a Java fun house like Yahoo, they would have tanked long ago.
weland 13y ago
I beg to differ. > Through these actions and posts, shes's showing how cool and fun Yahoo! is. Look, the CEO works on weekends with a small skunkworks team on designing logos, and nerds out on the subtle details like any cool designer would do. Through these actions and posts, she looks like someone I wouldn't want to work with, or for. I avoid people who claim "I am not X, but I know enough to be dangerous" like the plague they are. I've had my share of "I am not an engineer, but I know enough to be dangerous"; they're the people who think you used two decoupling caps in parallel because you couldn't find one with the right value, or who are always there to help you with an obvious and useless tip when you're debugging a program -- and then you spend five minutes explaining them why they're not even close to the problem (partly because they used some words that mean something different than what they thought they mean). And take another fifteen to gather back your focus, as a bonus. Second, if I had some work to do, the last thing I'd want is the CEO in my room. Yahoo looks like a big company, don't they have some CEO-ing to do? When you decide you want to make a career out of pushing papers and borderline lying to investors, stick to it. Third, having the CEO bug you and working weekends is a really low, indecent form of manipulation. Someone who's designs stuff for Yahoo is probably experienced enough to have gone past the "I have to work weekends to impress my boss and jumpstart my career" phase. The dudes probably had families to spend time with (or bars to hit and get drunk over the grudge of their loneliness, whatever). Let them go home, you can brag to the press about what a workaholic culture your company has without actually keeping your employees at work over the weekend. Sure, if the atmosphere is fun enough, it may seem like you're having fun and playing, but this doesn't avoid the burnout, it just makes its settling less painful. > finally was in a situation where I could watch the video, and I only feel stronger about my point. Listen to the music (some dubstep/ibiza dance/feel good summer hit hybrid) - this is clearly destined to appeal to the 21 year old Stanford student looking for a new job, not the guy on HN who will criticize anything that makes it to the front page. This is clearly destined to appeal to the ambitious, 21-year hipster who wants to be a corporate drone but with style, you know, like he's not a corporate drone. Job-desperate, loan-starved young graduates who want to subscribe to the 70 hours a week -- but oh so fun -- culture. I don't think they are to be condemned (we were all pretty stupid when we were 21), but someone who perpetuates this culture isn't to be admired and certainly not made an example of, not among tech professionals anyway. Among Wall Street investors? Sure, who the hell wouldn't admire someone who can make people work over weekends and proud of it. Also -- at the risk of doing a sexist no-no -- I can't help but wonder how someone like, say, Steve Ballmer, which I guess no one around here wants to do, would have been treated if he were the one treating his employees like this -- micromanaging exactly the people you shouldn't micromanage (i.e. the creative team), over a weekend, then bragging about how hip it is. Breathing life into a company is a difficult task, and Marissa Mayer seems to be trying to do exactly that. Initial success is obviously to be applauded, but don't be overly enthusiastic. The smith's fire will eat through the coals and make the iron unworkable if you overwork the bellows.
petercooper 13y ago
This is a brilliant move by Marissa Mayer. In some ways, but I think Yahoo! has essentially proven their brand is so weak that it can be represented by a new poorly thought out design every day and, well, no-one cares. If Apple, McDonald's or Coca Cola did something similar, they'd be committing brand suicide and attracting a lot of flak, but with Yahoo it's just "Oh well, another new Yahoo logo, who cares?"
- goblin89 13y ago
  > If Apple, McDonald's or Coca Cola did something similar, they'd be committing brand suicide and attracting a lot of flak I remember Apple's iOS 7 Video, where some guy was geeking out about the grid they've designed and are using for everything, from icons to UI layout. > but with Yahoo it's just "Oh well, another new Yahoo logo, who cares?" To be fair, Yahoo didn't change logo for 18 years, according to the OP. It's pretty big news.
tlrobinson 13y ago
This might be true if the logo were actually good, but it's not. It looks like it was designed by a machine.
DoubleMalt 13y ago
I disagree. The result is a brilliant demonstration on why design by committee is bad.
Okvivi 13y ago
I couldn't agree more. What I feel a lot of people are missing here is that Marissa's making Yahoo a place where good engineers want to work: where empowered smart people can make a difference in a scrappy way.

tonystubblebine 13y ago

I've been trying to evaluate this logo under the assumption that the people who are working at Yahoo are smarter than me and have more information than me. My personal reaction is that I hate the bevel. Hate. I was rooting for #10, which is a simplified and modernized version of their old logo. But. I'm not a Yahoo user. Period. The bevel immediately made me think of some brands you'd find on sale at Macy's, which mainstream America associates with quality, but which my artisanal-y brainwashed brain thinks of as mass produced junk. Imagine for a second that Yahoo has research showing normal people reacting to this logo with words like luxury and high-class. If that's the case, then Yahoo just pulled an epic branding end run. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are fighting to be the flattest, plainest, more boring brands. Then Yahoo stepped up and said, "Yo. Let's be fabulous together!" In the old days, Yahoo's skunkworks Brickhouse division had posters in their break room titled "Know your competition" with pictures of Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin. Trying to copy the other tech giants was (one of) Yahoo's problems because the Yahoo teams couldn't celebrate what they were actually doing well. The contrarian in me salutes Yahoo for this crazy, out of left field, gaudy, off-trend logo. Genius.

avb 13y ago
About the bevel... I hate it too. The only thing I can come up with is that someone, probably Mayer, thinks it's a hipster cool throwback to the late '90s when everyone was using Photoshop's default bevel and emboss filters like there was no tomorrow.
derefr 13y ago
I feel like, if Meyer had been at this ten years ago, Yahoo would have just finished purchasing MySpace--Tumblr is just the modern-day equivalent. It's that kind of aesthetic, and that kind of audience, that they're reaching for here. (Meyer's own blog theme is a great example!)
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
Being Dutch, I associate the bevel with "American bad taste". Design is sacred here, logo design doubly so. This would be ridiculed.

usaphp 13y ago

I like how marketing people try to come up with explanation of BS things they do...

LAMike 13y ago
You can justify almost anything in design, it's so subjective and the person who gets paid the most always has the final say on what's "right" (except for a few unicorns that allow they're designers ultimte freedom)

machbio 13y ago

Until today, I believed Marrisa Mayer was all hype... she is a lady of attention to details - yahoo needs no other person her at this moment.. About the Logo, it seems so 90s.. normal people will be bored and you cannot explain the hyperbole's and the geometrical symmetry of the logo.. Yahoo needed a story that common man could understand - they have missed the train by designing a very technical logo.. I may be wrong, yahoo needs to attract technical people.. or I may be right with all the business happening at the consumer side.. they needed to balance - but they failed to do it..

atmosx 13y ago
> [...] they have missed the train by designing a very technical logo.. I may be wrong [...] You may be correct though. What does the LOGO has to do with what Yahoo! will achieve is beyond me. I like logo stories: Makes you think that if Nike didn't had the Just do it logo, it would have failed (and some kids in Eastern Asia wouldn't have to work their ass out for my Nikes).

creativityland 13y ago

Is it just me or her tumblr is timing out frequently with packet drops.

bjz_ 13y ago

It's great that she's actually using tumblr. It shows that she's likes her product enough to use it herself.

MisterBastahrd 13y ago
Or that she has to justify a billion dollar purchase to her shareholders and using it is one way to do so.

nl 13y ago

That Yahoo! brand, as represented by their logo must be quite an asset given how it is all over their CEO's blog as well as their corporate blog[1]. Ironically their corporate blog isn't loading at the moment because http://ajax.googleapis.com http://ajax.googleapis.com isn't responding. (Edit: - seems ok now) [1] http://yahoo.tumblr.com/ http://yahoo.tumblr.com/

nodesocket 13y ago

Watching this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agRxG-X_TEQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agRxG-X_TEQ The pure typeface design is truely amazing and beautiful. The bevel and depth completely ruin the entire logo though. Yahoo should have gone with a flat design and a solid fill of their trademark purple color and called it quits.

namank 13y ago

Well, I like the bevel. It may not be flat but it does an excellent job in the context it's supposed to be used in - go check out yahoo.com. That favicon could definitely be reworked though.

panacea 13y ago
The favicon hasn't been updated yet.

gscott 13y ago

I hate the bevel but looking at it on the Yahoo website when the logo is crushed into the top right corner the bevel makes it pop out a little more and be more noticable when it is that small the bevel pretty much disappears.

qq66 13y ago

Couldn't she get her full name as a Tumblr username?

fomojola 13y ago
Its even odder: she did get her full name (http://marissamayer.tumblr.com/ http://marissamayer.tumblr.com/). However, it includes a comment that points to http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/ http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/ (it says Please see marissamayr.tumblr.com for my blog.). No autoredirect, no link nothing. Quite odd.
- deleted 13y ago
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- molecule 13y ago
  Flickr Tumblr Mayr
  - Pitarou 13y ago
    Yuckir and yuckir.
  - chavesn 13y ago
    So much more makes sense now, like why I feel like their use of Tumblr for the corporate blog is purely perfunctory.

40 13y ago

Before reading this I felt the logo resembled the Google logo quite a bit in terms of the complexity of the font and the use of bevels, and felt like Marissa was involved and wanted to go for a familiar feel to that of Google. I feel its more likely after reading this considering who level in input.

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easytiger 13y ago

Geeking out. Another phrase that makes me want to bite my arm off.

saint-loup 13y ago
And yet, Neal Stephenson made an interesting distinction between "geeking out" and "vegging out": "To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal - and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17stephenson.html?...
mason240 13y ago
Anyone that has to use the words "geek" or "nerd" to describe themselves or what they are doing are neither. If you are a geek or nerd, you just are. You don't have to convince other people of it.
slantyyz 13y ago
Geeking out is a bit of a strange phrase to use with the logo. One can geek out on the details of the design, but the big problem (for me) with the logo aren't the details, it's the emotion. While I'm sure I'll get used to the new design, it leaves me emotionally empty. I very much preferred the old one. This might be contrary to what a lot of people here are saying -- I'm not sure adding a professional designer to the group would have made a difference. You need to add the right designer. Not all designers are equipped to work in those situations, i.e., one who can deal with the huge personalities and egos of those on the redesign committee. And the worst egos in the room aren't always the CEO, they can often be the creative director types.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

Well done - for a multi billion dollar company, spending a weekend on your logo is about the right ratio of time to value. Looks good enough to be acceptable, can be reused in all the sub projects. Done, now lets get on with real product improvements. Move on folks, nothing exciting to see here

johnohara 13y ago

Focusing on the logo is a detraction from the vast array of truly positive changes that have been implemented over the past 6 months -- by some very talented teams I might add. No question the whole site is on the move. To where or what, I dunno. But my interest is piqued and the overall experience feels tighter. If that makes sense.

BIair 13y ago

It's obvious they missed the easiest way to simplify and modernize the logo... Drop the exclamation mark! Remember when Marissa had the TM removed? Nothing screams 90s more than an exclamation. It takes courage to innovate. Ford, "They wanted a faster horse". Jobs, "They wanted a phone with a physical keyboard". Yahoo? The "new" logo doesn't signify that anything has changed.

vacri 13y ago

First impressions for me were "They've sterilised the logo!". Now it looks so corporate and planned... ... and I actually laughed when I read "Our last move was to tilt the exclamation point by 9 degrees, just to add a bit of whimsy".

jakejake 13y ago
It looks like a logo that I would create. My logo creation technique involves typing out the brand name, then selecting whichever stock font installed on my machine most strikes my fancy. Perhaps the ratios of the bevels and font size contain some hilarious, hidden inside joke for mathematicians which I do not understand.
- w0utert 13y ago
  Don't forget to add some bevel or shadow, it would be a waste do let your dangerous Illustrator skills go to waste... :-/

ngoel36 13y ago

If the logo hadn't changed in 18 years, what exactly had this logo design team of 4 been up to for so long?

forgingahead 13y ago
Working from home of course
- reustle 13y ago
  Not anymore!
pearjuice 13y ago
Heh, that is what I thought too. Maybe for geocities?
colmvp 13y ago
Other design jobs for Yahoo properties? Or maybe they weren't part of the team beforehand? It's not like designers just sit there doing one thing forever.
randyrand 13y ago
Cant tell if this was sarcasm but it is obviously a one time team created just for the purpose of redesigning the logo.

obilgic 13y ago

time you spent on something != quality of the result

dxhdr 13y ago

Are they A/B testing the logo without the exclamation? About one out of 10 times I load yahoo.com the little animated ! never happens and the logo is left without the exclamation. Could just be bad code, though.

Pitarou 13y ago

Like the form. Hate the bevelling. Am I just following the braying "flat is the new shiny-lickable" herd here?

Uchikoma 13y ago

Love the boldness. Going against flat is bold - and ugly. It reminds me of a book I had in the 90s which showed 5-click Photoshop tricks, there was a golden bevel trick in there (and marble, and shadows, and stamping).

atmosx 13y ago

Seriously, 31 comments about (a really mediocre if you ask me) LoGo? I'd only wanted to know how did it cost, out of curiosity... Because at eLance you can get a better one at 75USD without ruining a weekend (not joking).

mitchellbryson 13y ago
I think you should publish this brilliant $75 logo for us to critique :)

ricardobeat 13y ago

The CEO and an intern redesign a $25b company's logo during the weekend. That's news! Minor nitpick: the logo is looking like a 1-bit alpha GIF on Chrome, due to the downsizing: http://cl.ly/image/183U1t0l1u3e http://cl.ly/image/183U1t0l1u3e (FF on the left)

SolarUpNote 13y ago

Nice. I like this one much better than the other 30 choices they presented to users. *actually I didn't watch the video all the way to the end where it shows the bevel. Yuck. Why?

elliottcarlson 13y ago
I'll say this again and specifically on this comment since it spells out "30 choices" while others just hint at it - There were no 30 choices. This was always the final logo. The 30 prior "logos" were a "whimsical" way of getting users used to the idea of change. None of those 30 logos were done seriously...

capex 13y ago

Without thinking about who did this, the bevel is plainly ugly. I wonder if no one in the entire design team could tell this to Marissa Mayer?

colmvp 13y ago
Uh yeah I'm sure they did. Except who do you think gets the final say in the decision? Hint: It's not the designers.

ozi 13y ago

Looks like they spent more time making a video about the logo than the new logo itself.

bsaul 13y ago

Does anyone else here thinks the logo is much more feminine ? It's more elegant, and the mix on bold and thin lines inside the letters reminds me a bit of fashion magazine logos ( think vogue).

mitchellbryson 13y ago
Yes very much so. I first thought it would look better on a cosmetic product, without the exclamation point. The Clinique branch has similar "scallops" and no straight edges... http://bit.ly/161aoLo http://bit.ly/161aoLo
Pxtl 13y ago
That's my reaction as well. The person who described it as "Macy's" was spot on. My immediate reaction when looking at it is a department-store makeup counter. Which is good branding, considering how one of Yahoo's strongest points is that they go after female market segments that geek-driven companies often fail to capture. They're chasing women. Not just women, but decidedly non-geeky women. Remember that Yahoo's logo was originally red, not purple.

dsirijus 13y ago

I have a feeling that final results - people like the logo most similar to the old one - were anticipated at yahoo, and entire logo testing situation "fabricated" to state "you liked us all this time, and we're just reminding you of that".

yardie 13y ago

> I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous :) May I present the new Steve Jobs, everyone.

wellboy 13y ago

This seems to be really well intended, but this is the outcome when you put a data-geek into charge of design instead of a true artist. If they had just launched a design contest on a freelancer, they would have had a multiple times better results. Why not try a golden-yellow "Y" on a blue background for instance. Think different, play with the colors. Design has to come from the heart and really reflect the personality of the company and show the LOVE! This yahoo logo still looks very stoic and still like from the 90s, urgs. Designing is simply not a data-driven approach, it is the complete opposite.

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appplemac 13y ago

Is that Empire of the Sun?

timack 13y ago
Yep, track is called 'Alive' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPKAwJKGSDc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPKAwJKGSDc]

brownbat 13y ago

> We didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo. Straight lines don’t exist in the human form and are extremely rare in nature, so the human touch in the logo is that all the lines and forms all have at least a slight curve. This reminds me of the design team that tilted the Pepsi logo 10 degrees to show Pepsi was "leaning towards the future." [1] Is there a rule that says you can't run a company if you see through these sort of lines as utterly laughable? 1. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42740470/pepsis-nonsensical-logo-redesign-document-1-million-for-this/ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-42740470/pepsis-nonse...

peterjs 13y ago
The good (well...) news is that the curved lines can't even be seen, when the logo is shrinked :)
- brownbat 13y ago
  As a corollary, that must look unnatural and dehumanizing. :)
marknutter 13y ago
I'll never be able to unsee this: http://cdn.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/pepsi-fat-man-500x385.jpg http://cdn.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2...

rmrfrmrf 13y ago

Several annoyances here: 1. Showing hand-drawn versions of your logo in what clearly is set in hardly-modified Optima (a typeface designed way back in the 1950s) makes me cringe. Why show fake process work? 2. No one is impressed when the manager does the job of their employees. For one, it implies that they don't trust their employees, and secondly, it makes the job of designers look like a fun hobby that anyone can get into. The result is exactly what happened here: an utterly boring logo redesign that looks just-polished-enough to make people think that Marissa Mayer is some kind of genius, yet simple enough to make people think that true designers bring no value to the table. 3. The whole 30 days of logos schtick was awful. Good artists know that the worst thing you can do for yourself is show too much of your own work. After a while, everything looks same-y and the weaknesses begin to become more apparent. The whole concept reeks of indecision and a pray-to-God moment that one of the logos would have such a huge outpouring of support that the Yahoo! team wouldn't have to make up their own minds on a vision. 4. The bevel isn't even customized. It's a preset Adobe effect. Pretending like the Y shape in the bevel was intentional is horseshit and obviously a desperate attempt to give some sort of conceptual significance to what is otherwise a completely forgettable design.

meerita 13y ago
Totally right. That's why the design by consensus is always wrong. The brand is now biased. MM had a reputation of being intrusive even on silly details making the design process horrible and with crappy results. From this I remember various things you may remember too: 1. The Google favicon. They did thousands and the one they choosed was crappiest one. They had to change it later. 2. The Google favicon with blue. Also, they did silly tests. Now that thing is gone. I think this post resumes it well http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html

andyjohnson0 13y ago

I'm not a designer and know nothing about logo design, so let me ask: Is there an objective way to evaluate a piece of design such as this new logo? Or does it just come down to personal like/dislike?

unwind 13y ago
I'm sure there can be, somehow tying together intricate details how how our brains process visual data and how various associations are triggered. I'm pretty sure no such process exists today though, which (at least to me) makes various statements that sound as if they were part of such an objective evaluation sound so hilarious. Note: I have nothing but respect for the skills of good graphic designers, but it's just very strange to hear some of the justications made. My favorite regarding this logo was from the second bullet: We preferred letters that had thicker and thinner strokes - conveying the subjective and editorial nature of some of what we do. What does that mean? Am I supposed to look at the logo, and somehow conclude "ah, it uses both thin and thick strokes, naturally that is because Yahoo are sometimes subjective, sometimes they're editorial". Is "editorial" even the opposite of "subjective"?! Hilarious.
snom380 13y ago
Well, what you can do is ask people who have worked with logo design, won awards for logo design etc. Of course, these people may be biased, but at least they have more experience in evaluating logos than others. So in general, if many of them like it there's a good chance it's actually good. The other thing you can do is to look back. In 10, 20 years, it might be more obvious whether a logo was successful or not. But again, that may be influenced by the success of the company. I think saying that it all comes down to personal taste is bit misleading, because that personal taste is generally shared by a large part of the population.
- andyjohnson0 13y ago
  "Well, what you can do is ask people who have worked with logo design, won awards for logo design etc." "Of course, these people may be biased, but at least they have more experience in evaluating logos than others" This just raises the question of how these experts evaluate a logo. I understand that academic art criticism [1] has developed frameworks for evaluating works of art - genre, cultural impact, relationship to preceding works, etc. But a logo isn't art - it is almost entirely functional and used for (mundane?) concerns like brand identity. I can appreciate that some logs have existed for long enough that they have a historical context (e.g. Coca-Cola) but I don't see how this helps evaluate its primary purpose. Any graphic designers want to comment? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_criticism

tomelders 13y ago

I've designed a few logos in my time. All I see here is post-rationalisation, the last bastion of the cowboy designer trying to justify their costs.

andrelaszlo 13y ago

http://i.imgur.com/qv1WDrS.png http://i.imgur.com/qv1WDrS.png Anything will be better than this. My guess is that they're fully aware that the bevel makes a lot of people think of the 90's. To me, the message is "stability" and "experience".

georgemcbay 13y ago

So, yeah, with all of this media around the new Yahoo I decided to attempt to re-embrace Flickr as a place to host photos. My old Yahoo email address account was long since gone, so I tried to sign up for a new account. On entering my Google Voice phone number (which I use as my official number everywhere, because it makes it way easier for me to switch carriers without worrying about number porting) as my mobile number their verification routine informed me it wasn't a valid mobile number... STRIKE 1. So I get past that by entering my current actual cellphone number (which, again, I consider 'unofficial' since it may change 6 months or a year from now whereas my Google Voice number will not), which I had to go look up because I did not even know what it was... Annoying to have to do that, but not the end of the world. I start uploading a set of 70 full sized photos to my first 'set' on Flickr over my not-so-fast DSL line. About an hour in to the upload, flickr informs me my login has timed out and the upload can't continue. Worse, not only did my overall upload not complete, but NONE of the photos in that upload show in my account despite the fact that the overall upload was about 50% done. STRIKE 2 through 71. Yeah, nice-ish logo, even with the bevels, but until Yahoo fixes their shit, who cares? My impression of the company is actually much worse now than it was a couple hours ago when I was pretty much neutral on them. Needless to say my flickr experiment is over and I'm not likely to be signing up for any Yahoo services anytime soon.

meerita 13y ago

Design by consensus = bad, really bad. If the CEO wears the designer boot and conditions the final art I think it's one of the biggest mistakes they will do. Right now, that logo to me looks like more or less those logos you can find on logotypes websites for 30 dollars. The logo on smaller sizes looks pretty crap. Just check it. The logo is only interesting on certain situations, that's why a good logo isn't just drop some non-straight lines in illustrator on a weekend. Bezels? That's so 90's.

rrrrtttt 13y ago

That Vogue girl is doing to Yahoo on behalf of Google what Stephen Elop did to Nokia on behalf of Microsoft.

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arrrr 13y ago

It seems weird to me that they went through so much trouble focusing on tiny details and then making the logo on the homepage so small that you can barely see them. I'm pretty ignorant of design theory though - can anyone recommend any reading materials (general, logo specific or other) that would provide a good introduction?

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sfjailbird 13y ago

The main problem with this logo is that it sends conflicting messages. On one hand it wants to be funky (differently sized letters, tilted exclamation mark), but on the other it oozes conservative, with its square and straight typeface and lack of color. Overall, 'conservative' clearly beats out 'funky', with the few creative touches clobbered into submission. The larger Y and O, supposed to add dynamism and 'fun', are not different enough to pop and convey that idea. This is particularly jarring with the larger O next to the smaller one at the end - only different enough to confuse, not to send a message. What's worse is the execution is poor and sloppy. It has no synergy. Notice the horizontal lines in the A and the H at strange 'close-but-not-equal' levels, neither tying into anything else in the logo. The flat foot of the larger Y sets one baseline, but the flat feet of the A and H define another, neither being referenced anywhere else in the logo. Perhaps I just don't get it. Maybe the amateurism of it is the message, in which case it comes through loud and clear.

dkhenry 13y ago

Its not a logo I would have made, but its different and it doesn't look _bad_. I appreciate the explanation she gave about the different aesthetics that went into it and how they tried to give it some deeper meaning then just a font on a white background.

normloman 13y ago

Anticlimactic. It's like their old logo, only more boring. Why does Yahoo exist?

GotNothing 13y ago

It looks like it should be on a bottle of perfume.

mapleoin 13y ago

The current animated, 3d logo on the frontpage reminds me of BonziBuddy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy

Keyframe 13y ago

Logo is nice, it feels more modern. Chiseled bevel is a matter of opinion and would probably get removed on smaller scales (hopefully). I'd like to see them redesign their front page though. It's incoherent.

garg 13y ago

I love the fact that the CEO and an intern can work together on a project at Yahoo.

samuelfine 13y ago

I'd like to point out, for the record, that this "logo design team" consisted of: - CEO - SVP of "Brand Creative" - VP, Creative Director - Someone who doesn't seem to exist online, outside of articles about this new logo - An intern You'll notice a distinct lack of professional designers in that list. Apparently this 10 billion dollar brand wasn't important enough to put in the hands of, you know, experts. Instead, they spent a weekend (ONE WEEKEND) "geeking out" over it. Which is definitely the best way to design a global brand. This is micromanagement at its very worst, and is an insult to the craft of design.

gersonaya 13y ago
Fully agreed.
tomelders 13y ago
Hmmm, while I agree with the sentiment, I don't think it's as simple as putting it in the hands of a "professional". Simply picking the right designer is something that requires an inordinate amount of taste to start with. People with no taste or feel for design stand a strong chance of picking a poor designer (or agency). I'll cite Wolf Olins here as my example. Not only is it clear that no one in Wolf Olins seems to have taste or a feel for design, their clients don't seem to have it either. So there's a feedback loop of affirmation as people with no taste reward other people with no taste, which in turns makes other people with no taste think those other people with no taste have taste because all the people they know that they think have taste think those other people have taste. Meanwhile, the actual people with taste are watching from the sidelines, because they've marginalised themselves by being honest about what is good design and what is bad design, but with a passion that comes across as pedantry and rudeness. So they watch in despair as the whole debacle unfolds in front of them, growing ever more frustrated which serves only to marginalise them even more. While I'm here... I think almost everything Wolf Olins churns out is sub-stadard slop barely worthy of a fist year national diploma students portfolio. Their work has neither grace, finesse, or charm. It's all cack-handed indulgent arse-gravy of the highest order dipped in a seemingly bottomless ocean of post-rationalisation and I can not believe that people keep lapping it up. It's rank amateur. Their work stinks like shit and I hate them for it. And there I go, proving my point about why no-one listens to designers.

general_failure 13y ago

Wow, the comments here about working on weekends are shocking. Rome wasn't built in a day and companies aren't built with 9-5 jobs. This is sad and hypocrite. Every start up I know works hard, long and hacker news should know better

bernardom 13y ago

Other than GuiA's (currently-on-top) comment, almost everything I've read here is disgustingly negative. "She's a micromanager, she should be 'CEOing' instead of designing, she's a terrible designer, she should spend time with her kids (!!), she has hubris to say she can design something, it's all about her, she's destroying the craft of design, the wafts of Denning - Krugerism are pluming out." I just... come on, people!

grexi 13y ago

Let's give some feedback about the logo here: http://usersnap.com/yahoologoreview http://usersnap.com/yahoologoreview I don't like it.