6 ms·

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

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?
    - nostrademons 13y ago
      The thought occurred to a lot of folks when Steve Jobs said he had a biography done "so his kids would know him". A few of them (eg. Jeff Atwood) even changed their behavior as a result.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
    - Delmania 13y ago
      Not only do they not die or turn into monsters, but it's also an important lesson on how to explore one's interest to occupy oneself! I also wanted to mention the idea of including your children in your interests so they get to know you and spend time with you (and you get to do something you love!), but there was no good seguefor that.
      - charltones 13y ago
        According to Wikipedia her kid is less than 1 year old. It's tricky to involve them in your interests at that age :) I can just about get my 5 year old interested, but my 2 year old is more keen on pressing the off button on my laptop.
      - sho_hn 13y ago
        Indeed! In my early childhood I had the great fortune that my parents' workplace was located next door to our family home, so I got to observe and bother them at work, as well as help out within my limited abilities (they ran a small engineering company, so e.g. folding blueprints and stuffing them into big paper envelopes). That taught me a lot of valuable lessons about life and work (perhaps not always in the moment, but it was at times useful to go back to those memories later in life, anyway), and it was great to feel a little in the loop, so it also taught me something about the value of communicating with your loved ones. If they had a rough week I would know first-hand and cut them a little slack for not having the spare capacity to deal with me being a brat :).
tlrobinson 13y ago
It screams "design by math" to me. Did you see the video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0b6qaPY-CQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0b6qaPY-CQ
- stephencanon 13y ago
  It's far worse. It's faux-design-by-math. There's no rational schema behind the arcs and guides scattered through that obnoxious little video; instead they represent a post-facto attempt to justify choices that are either default (directly from the font on which the logo is based) or arbitrary by cloaking them in the visual trappings of "design". It's the sort of thing I expect to see in the first crit of a sophomore typography class, not in a professional context.
alttag 13y ago
I have to agree. In addition, most of the features of the logo she raves about are not visible in the default (and very pixelated) state on the home page. In a design world that seems to be shifting to high-resolution, flat design, this seems like an odd step backward.

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?
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    The thought occurred to a lot of folks when Steve Jobs said he had a biography done "so his kids would know him". A few of them (eg. Jeff Atwood) even changed their behavior as a result.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - Delmania 13y ago
    Not only do they not die or turn into monsters, but it's also an important lesson on how to explore one's interest to occupy oneself! I also wanted to mention the idea of including your children in your interests so they get to know you and spend time with you (and you get to do something you love!), but there was no good seguefor that.
    - charltones 13y ago
      According to Wikipedia her kid is less than 1 year old. It's tricky to involve them in your interests at that age :) I can just about get my 5 year old interested, but my 2 year old is more keen on pressing the off button on my laptop.
    - sho_hn 13y ago
      Indeed! In my early childhood I had the great fortune that my parents' workplace was located next door to our family home, so I got to observe and bother them at work, as well as help out within my limited abilities (they ran a small engineering company, so e.g. folding blueprints and stuffing them into big paper envelopes). That taught me a lot of valuable lessons about life and work (perhaps not always in the moment, but it was at times useful to go back to those memories later in life, anyway), and it was great to feel a little in the loop, so it also taught me something about the value of communicating with your loved ones. If they had a rough week I would know first-hand and cut them a little slack for not having the spare capacity to deal with me being a brat :).

tlrobinson 13y ago

It screams "design by math" to me. Did you see the video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0b6qaPY-CQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0b6qaPY-CQ

stephencanon 13y ago
It's far worse. It's faux-design-by-math. There's no rational schema behind the arcs and guides scattered through that obnoxious little video; instead they represent a post-facto attempt to justify choices that are either default (directly from the font on which the logo is based) or arbitrary by cloaking them in the visual trappings of "design". It's the sort of thing I expect to see in the first crit of a sophomore typography class, not in a professional context.

alttag 13y ago

I have to agree. In addition, most of the features of the logo she raves about are not visible in the default (and very pixelated) state on the home page. In a design world that seems to be shifting to high-resolution, flat design, this seems like an odd step backward.