11 ms·

Logo, Bullshit & Co., Inc.

212 points by pascal07 13y ago

ctdonath 13y ago
I'm wondering if anyone shared my experience on this: I'd seen a few posts referencing a change in the Yahoo logo. Having not been to the site for a long time (year or more?) I wasn't inclined to see. Then comes this article, which I get sucked into (proper & creative use of obscenity can work), and read the whole diatribe...without knowing what the new logo is. Worked up about the change, having now learned its details without knowing the result, I take a look. Yahoo.com. New logo...meh. It screams "corporate" without the big-budget expensive-talent origin. It speaks of whimsy and cross-discipline inventiveness...beaten into submission by an unhappy "you did my job and now I have to clean up the mess" department. The problem isn't that they didn't pay a large sum for its development, it's that there are people who are very good at such things (be it highly paid or tangential hobby) and none of them were on the weekend team. I'm reminded of the story of Steve Jobs calling a top guy at Google late one weekend to complain that their shade of yellow was wrong - and he was right.
pagekicker 13y ago
Great post and spot-on.
yesimahuman 13y ago
Not to discount the technical analysis, but it still begs the question of whether any of those points matter for non-designers, or for the business. Just because they didn't go through an agency doesn't mean the logo won't be successful and the attention won't help the business. I hate to bring up Google, but they've done pretty well despite having a history of logos no self-respecting agency would ever produce.
- rubinelli 13y ago
  Yeah, I feel for those agencies, and at times like this I'm glad to be a software developer. A whippersnapper may say he can do my job over a weekend, but delivering it is another thing entirely. I don't think we have to bring up Google. In fact, we don't even have to go beyond Yahoo. For all the talk on design and building a strong visual identity, Yahoo in its glory days was visually atrocious. And it didn't mater a lick.
  - colmvp 13y ago
    Because it just had to do a set of things functionally right. Whereas branding is more important in an industry where products are similar to one another in function, like consumer goods.
netrus 13y ago
I do not agree. The reason logos usually are expensive and take months: Because what else? If I have a multi-million Dollar marketing budget, sure the logo will take a good chunk of that, not only, say one permille (still enough to pay 5 designers for a week). If I want to change the perception of my company, I will not rush. Does this mean the logo will perform better than one a design student made over the weekend? No. Do many months of work prevent a failure? No. In the end, Yahoo wants profit through revenue through site usage through loyal users. Does letter spacing have an influence on this? I doubt it.
- sfjailbird 13y ago
  Seems like anti-intellectualism. Just because you can't recognize an outstanding logo doesn't mean there is no such thing - it is an art form and a science, which is the reason there are superstars in the field who command hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees. (Whether or not a logo has a real impact on business performance is another discussion.)
  - bruceboughton 13y ago
    And superstars can still fuck up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6327544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6327544
  - JRFuentes7 13y ago
    True, which reminded me of one such superstar, Paul Rand, who designed the NeXT logo for Steve Jobs. http://stocklogos.com/topic/famous-logo-designs-and-how-much-did-they-cost http://stocklogos.com/topic/famous-logo-designs-and-how-much...
    - snogglethorpe 13y ago
      > one such superstar, Paul Rand, who designed the NeXT logo for Steve Jobs ... and rather more famously, he designed the IBM logo, which is arguably one of the most famous and well-respected logos in history.
sfjailbird 13y ago
I agree with this assessment - apparently taking this task so lightly (especially given the poor outcome) is a baffling and shocking misstep, so bad that I have to think hard about if there is some hidden angle I'm not seeing, some genius act of extremely subtle performance marketing. It would seem extreme to judge a CEO by something relatively trivial and unimportant such as this, but honestly the way this project was handled makes me very bearish on Yahoo under Mayer.
bruceboughton 13y ago
>> And what is more efficient than working directly with the CEO on the brand identity? A dream setup. Also, it’s cheap. A weekend for a logo, instead of paying a branding agency millions and waiting months for something that can be done in a couple of days? That’s smart business! >> Is it? Yes. People will bitch about your logo whether you paid $100mn for it or hacked it over the weekend. Logos, like names, don't actually matter much. It is the change that is important, not the design.
SimianLogic2 13y ago
How I perceived this article: I'm a thoughtful designer and pissed off that an "amateur" CEO is dipping her toes in my sandbox. Also, if I can bill a client for months of logo design and they see a Fortune 500 CEO doing it themselves they may question if I'm worth it. (I know nothing about the author, so this is just my perception.) Yes, there's some validity to calling out the bullshit in Mayer's fluffy post. But equally mixed in are just as many nonsense bits...
VeejayRampay 13y ago
I think the logo looks awful. It looked awful in the first place anyway but it's well recognized and branded so I guess it doesn't matter much.
solistice 13y ago
Did anyone actually notice the logo changed? I didn't, and frankly, it seems like such a little change, I doubt many even noticed. Changing your logo to change your brand identity is the business equivalent of buying new running shoes to start shaping up. It doesn't quite work, does it? So I'm glad they didn't spend thousands and ten thousands of dollars on a new logo, because if the logo change is just ego stroking for the CEO, there isn't much use of spending months and awe-inspiring sums on it (like that matters).
AliEzer 13y ago
I totally disagree. And yes, it is just a logo. Google logo is still looking like it was made by a 10 years old. Sounds like the author is trying to justify his daily rate. Come on. And when big companies pay millions for a logo, it's not just for the logo itself, it's for all the identity of the company. Yahoo! changed its logo but the majority of the people won't even notice.
brianfryer 13y ago
ENOUGH with adding more fodder to the HN circlejerk of trashing Yahoo!.
GBiT 13y ago
Twitter for its first logo paid 15$
mattzito 13y ago
It seems odd that the writer first bashes MM for just getting in a room with some designers over a weekend, criticizing the concept of doing something so important in such a slapdash fashion, and then bashes her for polling the company about what they'd like to see in the logo, because it's "Design by polling". But - doesn't that show they did a lot of work upfront, that it wasn't just a slapdash effort? The whole article reads like a bitter rant from the company that didn't get hired to do the work, instead of a thoughtful discussion of the logo itself (I'm not saying that iA was in the running to do the work, just that the tone is oddly hostile).
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  The whole thing feels like a marketing play, to be honest. An attempt to gain some attention by riding the media wave about the new Yahoo logo. There's nothing wrong with that, per se. Plenty of agencies, SaaS companies, and service providers do it. Hell, plenty of agencies get hired to do it on behalf of their clients. What rankles here is the tone. As you say, it reads "bitter." The author's confrontational style does him no favors. It piques our interest in his agenda (whatever it may be), rather than in his content.
- slantyyz 13y ago
  >> the tone is oddly hostile I wouldn't read much into his tone. He tends to be very opinionated, and he tends to express his opinions in a fashion very much like Linus Torvalds.
  - temuze 13y ago
    There's a difference between opinionated and rude. I don't think rude in a company blog makes the organization look good. I'd be less likely to hire them because it seems they can't provide constructive criticism without being jerks.
    - slantyyz 13y ago
      Some people use a "shock jock" tone as a tool for self-promotion. The article did manage to make it to the front page of HN, after all. And while the tone may turn some people off (myself included), it is probably the right tone and post for the target market of the OP's products.
moron4hire 13y ago
Whenever I hear someone say "not being professional", I replace "being professional" with "conforming to my overly narrow world view." While professionalism is an important concept, it has never been the case that I have seen it referenced properly. Instead, it's usually just some SJ who can't sleep at night unless everyone fits into a little box.
toddmorey 13y ago
I've been around adverting for a long time. I've been in agencies, I've freelanced, I've been the client. I've worked with individuals that charge $70/hr and teams that charge $20,000 per day. The author is completely right on one point: "...the saying in design: 'if it looks right, it is right.'” Here's the dirty secret: All logos are designed in a momentary collision of experience and accident. All logos are, in a sense, designed in a weekend. That doesn't mean it isn't done thoughtfully. But that huge research spend? It sometimes guides the design a little, but it's mostly there to reverse-justify the final result (and of course expense) with the client. He's also asking us to assume the only thought Yahoo ever put into their logo and apparently, their brand, was that one 36-hour period. And the implication of course is that a large spend with an agency would result in a design that's both more calculated and less contrived. As the author says, bullshit.
- mcantelon 13y ago
  Yeah, given how easy it is for folks to learn the tools of their profession, graphic designers have an interest in aggrandizing their roles. The Nike logo was designed for $35 by a graphic design student rather than an experienced firm. Phil Knight said he didn't "love" it, but it would work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoosh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoosh
  - mietek 13y ago
    Learning the tools is not the same as learning the skills. Of course, learning anything is easy — just practice for 10,000 hours and you're all set!
    - adestefan 13y ago
      You're missing the point. The point is the logo really doesn't mean squat. In the long run in it's the products and/or the advertisement with the logo tacked on.
- gbhn 13y ago
  Yes, I definitely get the feeling of "breaking news! multi-million dollar logo consultant believes everyone should buy logos for 10 million dollars!"
izolate 13y ago
If Yahoo! really wanted to signal their change towards modernity and freshness, they were already sitting on their perfect logo: http://i.imgur.com/VpAwbwS.png http://i.imgur.com/VpAwbwS.png
luscious 13y ago
Says the guy with a 'strategic design' firm... Bullshit player lobbing bullshit claims at bullshit. Maybe he's A/B-ing some secondary bullshit article to see what can get better rank on HN. What's the best link bait for placating boredom and wasting attention on derivative industries suckling at the teat.
gamache 13y ago
There are some CEOs who think they can do anything, and design logotype over the weekend. There are other CEOs who think they can do anything, and start their own space program (with an electric car company on the side).
- guynamedloren 13y ago
  And there are other CEOs who think they can do anything, but don't. Instead, they do nothing, and sometimes those companies die. Let's be glad there are CEOs to talk about that are doing things.
  - gamache 13y ago
    They sure are glad there are people to applaud them for doing bullshit.
  - colmvp 13y ago
    And then there are CEOs who trust their team to make things and don't micromanage every aspect.
- arbutus 13y ago
  I suppose Elon Musk has spent every single past weekend starting a space program, and Marissa Mayer has no potential to ever achieve anything lofty enough to appease you ever in the entire future.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- CmonDev 13y ago
  That's a space program without actual space travel so far. And that's an electric car company that has a very limited amount of presence all of which is in USA (power stations etc.). The guy is talented but let's cut the hype a bit.
  - wtracy 13y ago
coldpie 13y ago
Hang on, hang on. People still visit Yahoo?
- elliottcarlson 13y ago
  http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/8/comScore_Media_Metrix_Ranks_Top_50_U.S._Web_Properties_for_July_2013 http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/8/comSc...
smacktoward 13y ago
I'm of two minds on this piece. On the one hand, the author is absolutely right that a good professional designer can bring things to the process that enthusiastic amateurs cannot. A really good logo doesn't just look cool, it communicates something about the nature and spirit of the company visually. It lays down a marker: "this is who we are." A designer who knows the grammar of visual communication will have a better chance of delivering that than will someone who doesn't. On the other hand, the author sadly doesn't do a great job of arguing the above point. Rather than, say, taking some great logos and pulling them apart for us to show how they do what they do, we just hear a lot of complaints about how the way Yahoo did theirs was "unprofessional." It makes it sound like the main complaint is that Yahoo had the gall to cut designers out of the process rather than that they chose a path that was more likely to result in a crappy logo, which strikes me as a more powerful (and accurate) complaint. In other words, outside the community of professional designers, nobody cares if Marissa Mayer hurt some designers' feelings. What they care about is how Marissa Mayer is stewarding the Yahoo brand. If you want to convince them that your way is right and her way is wrong, don't show them how her way threatens your business; show them how her way threatens her business.
- malaporte 13y ago
  Well said.
- emhart 13y ago
  I disagree, he actually makes it clear on multiple occasions throughout the piece that his critique is not about the end product of the logo and what could or could not have happened in the hands of a real designer. His critique is about her unserious approach to the process, an approach that she then justified in a cloud of post-process rationalization. His critique is saying that if this is the way she treats the logo redesign (even celebrates the casualness of the approach) then is she actually a competent steward for the Yahoo brand. I think it's a question worth asking and find that many of the comments here seem very focused on the debate about the merits of the logo design, rather than the question of brand management which both the piece, and thankfully your comment, at least attempt to address.
jpswade 13y ago
What the writer fails to notice is that the reason there is a lack of technicalities surrounding the logo is that it's clearly an emotional decision, not a logical one.
uptown 13y ago
Yahoo!'s challenge isn't their logo. Yahoo!'s challenge is ensuring their brand becomes associated with whatever they do best. When I think of Google I think of search, ads, and Android, and GMail. When I think of Microsoft I think of Windows, Office and XBOX. When I think of Apple I think of the iPhone, and the iPad. When I think of Facebook I think of photos and privacy (lack thereof). When I think of Yahoo there's no defining correlation to anything. I realize many people frequent their services - but personally Yahoo! doesn't stand out as "best" for anything, and I don't even know what direction they intend to pursue to change that perception.
mbesto 13y ago
Ha, I just wrote something very similiar about this: http://www.techdisruptive.com/2013/09/04/logo-doesnt-matter/ http://www.techdisruptive.com/2013/09/04/logo-doesnt-matter/ No, it’s not getting attention. It’s gaining trust. Ironically, for that you need a reflective, clear, and consistent brand identity. A different logo powered by bullshit doesn’t convey identity and trustworthiness. It conveys desperation. While the overall sentiment of the article is sound, I slightly disagree with this. First, this whole story of "creating the logo in a weekend" with an "intern who did some motion graphics to convey it's uniformity" is pure and simple, a publicity stunt, and a good one at that.[1] Personally I don't think there is an intern named Max who did that (most likely an agency), but this subtly conveys the perception of something that Yahoo is missing - innovation by small teams. The reality is that Yahoo does have a brand problem (just as MS does in the consumer-mobile space), so they have two tactics they need to implement in order to properly manage the brand: 1. Change the perception of the brand (changing the logo to match the new found brand perception is a good way to do that) 2. Create buzz around the fact that the perception has now changed. Marissa's plan for the logo did just that. I think it's a good strategy and something Stringer Bell would have been taught in his business class.[2] [1]-http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/60336044815/geeking-out-on-the-logo http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/60336044815/geeking-out-o... [2]-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbbZc2pab9k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbbZc2pab9k
- emhart 13y ago
  THAT is a very interesting thought and addresses the article on its own terms. I was getting a bit weary of the designer-ego bashing. The idea that the story they are trying to tell is one of rapid innovation in small teams is a really excellent observation, and if that is what she is truly trying to accomplish it's very interesting. That said, where does the 30 days of logos fit in? Just as a ramp to draw additional attention to the CEO blog post?
  - mbesto 13y ago
    I think the 30 days of logos is an ongoing engagement that achieves two things: 1) Provides an on-going set of buzz. You'll have heaps of people criticizing a lot of the logos. The PR value is absolutely massive for a 30 day event. 2) Reinforces the perception that Yahoo is open, creative and is "listening to it's users". I was getting a bit weary of the designer-ego bashing I don't think the designer-ego bashing was unwarranted, since I agree with the author on that premise. What the author failed to recognize is why this PR move was written this way.
felix 13y ago
I'd say the most annoying part (of so many annoying parts) was when he says: "The hard part is defining what your brand is and what it aims to become." And then somehow supports that with the opposite: "Is Yahoo “whimsical, yet sophisticated. Modern and fresh […] human, personal […] proud”? Currently, Yahoo is not associated with being whimsical or sophisticated, rather it is mostly boring and dull. It doesn’t portray modernity or freshness, it feels obsolete and dated." Apparently had he been hired, he'd have designed a logo to what he believes are Yahoo's current brand - dullness and obsolescence instead of what he suggested at the outset which is what you want your brand to be.
antidaily 13y ago
Did eBay's new logo get this criticized? Because it's infinitely worse. Then again, the CEO probably didnt work on i, which seems to be the major gripe.
evolve2k 13y ago
For me spending weeks and months of valuable time achieving a utopian logo would be the greater waste. I personally am very supportive of this let's get everyone we need to in the room and lets get it done approach. It bodes well for how MM might go about solving larger issues facing the company.
pejer 13y ago
I bet this is just a hoax and when the rage is at its peak, the real logo will be revealed. TADA! We ARE a whimsical company, yay for fooling all of you!
dedsm 13y ago
so, the whole logo is bad because Yahoo didn't pay millions of dollars on it?
vladsanchez 13y ago
Well said! It's all BS. A marketing feat that only conveys desperation.
paulsutter 13y ago
Yahoo really needs an internal culture of agility, listening to customers, and working weekends. She wants employees reminded of that every time they look at the logo, even if it means having a logo that's 10% less ideal.
- joshuaellinger 13y ago
  Yeah, I think the audience for this is internal. It is her way of saying that I can and will fix this company even if I have to do every bit myself. Maybe that is what Yahoo! needs to get moving. Crazy way to run a $10B company. I think the danger sign in this story is not a sub-standard logo but what it says about her inability to delegate.
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    > It is her way of saying that I can and will fix this company even if I have to do every bit myself. A message that I'm sure will really build trust and cohesion among the rest of the people she works with. "You people are such losers I have to do your jobs as well as mine" is not exactly a rousing call to unity.
    - colmvp 13y ago
      Indeed. Do I really want the CEO of a company breathing down my neck everytime I'm designing or releasing something?
- keithpeter 13y ago
  "...and working weekends." Why the working weekends bit? Is Yahoo short of people? Can they not plan their projects? Not trolling, just interested.
dnyanesh 13y ago
If Marissa Mayer hadn't mentioned about the time taken to design the logo, this post wouldn't exist.
lotsofcows 13y ago
I like this sentence: "Your brand architecture is your information architecture." In italics no less. Could someone tell me what it means?
- gbrindisi 13y ago
  Buzzword bingo.
Terretta 13y ago
> Next she should try the same with Yahoo’s server architecture. Ask everyone about the best server configuration and then put together a brief for the system administrators. Well, yeah, actually. Given a server architecture problem and a company still somewhat silo'd with devops scattered on various teams, asking everyone to weigh in on the architecture would be likely to improve the plan over a single person or even single team coming up with it. Think of the Jainist tale of the blind men and the elephant to understand why. People unlikely to be able to contribute won't have a strong opinion, while people able to contribute will, from their viewpoint. Strong opinions here represent gaps in what's being done versus what may be needed. And while you may still get a bell curve type of response, you're looking for business case viewpoints that might not otherwise have been considered and tech ideas from the tails that may give you a competitive edge. I think the author's sarcasm here falls especially flat. When it comes to a logo, even more so. Logos are about appealing to people, trying to convey something that people connect with. Employees like to feel proud of where they work. Their identity gets wrapped up in the company identity. Asking the whole team what they feel about identity is a great data point. And more cynically, now all these employees feel as though their suggestions were listened to. Come to Yahoo, where your ideas matter. What a great place to work! I'm disappointed in iA for suggesting employees shouldn't have a voice in how they see and relate to their own brand symbols.
- njr123 13y ago
  > People unlikely to be able to contribute won't have a strong opinion Oh man, you are so so wrong. Sure the people who know nothing won't contribute, but there will be a large number of people who know 'just enough to be dangerous' with very strong opinions that are not only wrong, but so completely obviously wrong you will not even know how to respond. And (in this hypothetical exersize), you will have to spend the next 2 months explaining to all of them why their ideas won't be used, at the same time without offending anyone.
  - Terretta 13y ago
    The people whose opinions are both fervent and wrong will tend to be either outliers, or mostly wrong the same (junior) way, and easily filtered out assuming you have any amount of expertise yourself. The opinions you aren't sure about are exactly the opinions your team should have a look at. What you're looking for are insights about business requirements or outside the box solutions you yourself missed or didn't stumble on. You're cynically mining the group as a business knowledge and solution brainstorming source, with an open mind to any wisdom it offers but with a healthy grain of salt. And no, you don't have to explain why each individual idea won't be used, if up front you say, "Our time and resources are limited, so unfortunately we just won't be able to do everything everyone suggests." If whether you offend is important to you and large numbers of people are likely to take offense because they're too clueless that not every single idea can be reconciled at the same time, your company may not be suited to this exercise. If whether you offend is important to you and only small numbers of people will take offense, wrap up after the feedback with "Wow, everyone, fantastic input. While not every idea will make it into the product, every single idea helped inform our approach. Thanks to each and every one of you!" In other words, respond in the aggregate, not individually. Finally, if you're talking about large numbers of people and you don't have the authority to, or you don't know how to, respond to people in aggregate, then this approach isn't for you.
pagekicker 13y ago
Great post and spot-on.
alphadogg 13y ago
Two words: confirmation bias.
Pxtl 13y ago
Personally, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. I think the unprofessionalism, the BS, the Mayer-hands-on thing... that is part of Yahoo's new branding strategy. It's all about making Yahoo feel more personal. More like your friend. Mayer is trying to personally invite you out for coffee to and talk about the fun she had bashing out their logo. I'm sure there are refinements that are happening behind-the-scenes after Mayer's "weekend". Hopefully resized forms of the logo will still get some TLC - the public doesn't generally notice when those things happen. Remember the demographic that Yahoo survived upon - women. Non-geeky grown-up middle-class women. That's why the new logo reminds you of a department store like Macy's, or the makeup counter at Shoppers Drug Mart. That's who Mayer is targeting with this ad, even this blog. It's a huge number of people that most of the technorati ignore - Facebook captured that market practically by accident, and Pinterest is exploding because somebody finally thought to actually aim in that direction on purpose. And what's pinterest about? Craftsmanship. Craftswomanship. Getting your hands dirty on a fun little artistic project. Like making a logo. Latter-day Yahoo has always found strength in ignoring the geek elite. They lost the geek elite a long time ago. This includes you, design geeks.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  > Remember the demographic that Yahoo survived upon - women interesting - can you tell me more? Whats the source of this (not challenging you, just want to quote it in the future :-) edit: reminds me of Whistler / Wilde reparte: Wilde: James, that was hilarious, I wish I had said it. Whistler: You will dear boy, you will.
  - Pxtl 13y ago
    Read it a few years ago... can't find the link anymore. Article said that the things that kept Yahoo alive were finance, women, and sports, and I bet they lost that finance thing since then. edit: best I can find is this article pointing out Yahoo mail's 63% female userbase, but it's pretty thin. http://blog.hunch.com/?p=34824 http://blog.hunch.com/?p=34824
    - 13y ago
mathattack 13y ago
When I read purple prose about logos, I keep thinking, "Let's just measure this to see if what they're saying is right." In general the soft-speak of brands, design and logo can move into meaninglessness. I know it's important. Design is why Apple succeeds. But it also should be something that can be explained in plain (and perhaps measurable) English.
progx 13y ago
What is better? Write about an own Logo or write a monstrous post about someone, who write about her own Logo ;-)
sidcool 13y ago
Wow, someone got pissed!
secstate 13y ago
There's gotta be some law of marketing at work here ... yahoo is the pepsi to google's coke ;-)
at-fates-hands 13y ago
The ironic thing is their old logo is still in a ton of places, like in their Fantasy Football image on their main login page: https://login.yahoo.com https://login.yahoo.com You can also Google it and the image on the right hand side is still the old logo. As much as she wanted to change it, they sure didn't do a good job of scrubbing their properties of the old logo.
- rocky1138 13y ago
  This link shows me the new logo.
jrs235 13y ago
I think "it's" working. "Negative" publicity is better than no publicity. Look at us! We're talking about Yahoo! now. EDIT: My point being: perhaps it's not about their logo or the importance of a logo and many of you aren't seeing the bigger picture/goal/objective...
hkuo 13y ago
The author fails to make an important distinction about the people that created the logo. It's one thing to say that a design agency came in and designed a logo in a weekend. It's another thing to say an internal design team bared down to create a logo in a "weekend" (in quotes, because Marissa may simply be using the term to mean done in a short timespan). I've worked on both the agency and client side, and the huge difference is that an agency comes in and has to learn very quickly about the client's business (more often than not getting it wrong the first time around) while the people working at the company live and breathe the company culture day in and out. At an agency, you're often jumping between a few clients, but unless you've been the agency of record for a number of years, it is simply not possible for you to have the depth of understanding that an internal marketing team will have. What an agency CAN bring is some fresh outsider thinking not colored by the company's history, but there's no reason the right people within the company can do so as well.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Wow, that was a great read. So many great collisions of emotions and ideas. After reading it I understood that the author was deeply offended by the characterization that the Yahoo! logo could be redesigned in a weekend. I get that, they work at a high end logo design studio, it's like telling a Ferrari mechanic you spent the weekend with some tools from Pep boys and tuned your Ferrari to give it an additional 15% BHP. The dissonance of knowing, as a professional in the space, what it takes to re-design a logo, and Marissa's characterization of the same, really irked this guy. That left me wondering how much of that irritation was professional pride. The meta point the author is trying to make, which is that brand and logo are intertwined but the dependency relationship is backwards in Marissa's post, reminded me of the clothes argument. That is the argument about the phrase "The clothes make the man." The two sides of that argument are that your a better person if you dress well, and if you dress well you are a better person. Which follows which? Can that even be resolved? I had this discussion with my teenage daughter when she wanted to dress like a pop star, who dressed like a slut. We had the whole talk about how clothes are a sort of 'marketing' for the person you are, and people will set their interactions with you to how you dress first, and the way they know you second. So if their first setting is 'slut' then you may get so pissed off at them that they never get to see the real you, and a friendship opportunity is missed. So our author has extrapolated that it is how you are as a company, that emerges in your logo, not your logo defines how you are as a company. And I tend to agree with that, but I also know that companies evolve based on how they see themselves. So the argument that Marissa is trying to create a perception which then manifests as reality is certainly plausible. I know when Yahoo! called me a while back (in the Carol Bartz days) and said they were looking for engineering leadership for the Web's #1 media company I thought "Hmm, this is a company that is not in touch with what they are." but it was what they were trying to be. So my summary of the article is that the author's pride was wounded by Marissa making it sound like Logo design was trivial, and attacked both her understanding of logos and the whole branding process in response. Along the way he gave us a couple of interesting things to think about.
- csbrooks 13y ago
  > I had this discussion with my teenage daughter As a parent, I'm picturing you giving this very articulate and coherent argument, and her stomping her feet saying "dad! I hate you!" and storming off. :)
5teev 13y ago
Historical note about the logo illustration at the top of the essay (which predates the well-known red logo): it was internally referred to as "Uncle Stinky".
ethagknight 13y ago
Logo, Bullshit & Co is quite a self-important read. Sure, Mayer's approached is unconventional for a large corporation, and it is more in line with a bootstrapping startup. Yahoo is in financial dire straights, so it is totally reasonable for Mayer to try an unconventional approach, save serious marketing dollars, and go her own way. We don't have to love the result, but at the end of the day, Mayer gave the brand a new face, and she didn't pay much for it.
Kurinys 13y ago
I like the fact that you argue the point that yahoo's brand is or is not: (insert completely meaningless addwords)
kens 13y ago
Five years from now, the logo will be the perfect hook for articles about Marissa Mayer and Yahoo. If Yahoo does well, the logo incident will show her brilliance and how her hands-on work saved the company. If Yahoo does poorly, the logo will be an emblem of how her micromanagement and distraction from the core business ruined the company. What I'm trying to say is that the stories told in retrospect always make what happens seem obvious, but looking forward, it's impossible to know.
devanti 13y ago
it's simple. yahoo's new logo is just bad. it's exactly what too much thought and group think does. the logo isn't even aligned properly on their homepage
atacrawl 13y ago
The fact of the matter is that none of us knows exactly happened that weekend, including whether it was really a weekend at all. But I think what offends so many people (myself, to a certain extent, included) is that this whole episode, as it has played out publicly, represents a certain obnoxiousness that so many of us have experienced -- executives that are in over their head inserting themselves into processes they have no business being part of, leading to results that are at best mediocre. Between Mayer's self-aggrandizing "'we' did it" post and the amateur hour "30 logos in 30 days" stunt, the situation resembles a farce. Marissa Mayer was supposed to be Yahoo's brilliant savior, so why is she playing the role of a stereotypical clueless CEO? These Onion stories in tandem seem appropriate here. http://www.theonion.com/articles/executive-creative-too,31024/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/executive-creative-too,3102... http://www.theonion.com/video/ceo-has-special-knack-for-recognizing-great-ideas,33677/ http://www.theonion.com/video/ceo-has-special-knack-for-reco... (minor edits)
Prefinem 13y ago
Honestly, it seems to me that the author is upset when a 10 billion dollar company just gave a big F you to the design community, and this is a little hissy fit. Look at all the news it generated, look at all the people talking about it. Change, The big old giant company is changing. And seriously, having worked with a few designers, they are the biggest little bitch when they feel insulted because you didn't come to them for "fashion" sense on design. Reading from a developer's viewpoint, this article is about an "artist" whining because a 10 billion dollar company said/showed that you can do their "month" long work in a weekend. The author's "this is unprofessional" is an attack that yahoo isn't playing by his rules.
ErikAugust 13y ago
Read "I'm Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google Employee...". I'm surprised no one has referenced the book. Fiddling with logos was (and still is) considered a bit sacreligious when it comes to branding but in the case of Google in the early 2000s, it was a big hit - what is now Google Doodles. Those were attributed partially to Marissa Mayer implementing the idea "over the weekend with the help of a designer".

212 points by pascal07 13y ago

I'm wondering if anyone shared my experience on this: I'd seen a few posts referencing a change in the Yahoo logo. Having not been to the site for a long time (year or more?) I wasn't inclined to see. Then comes this article, which I get sucked into (proper & creative use of obscenity can work), and read the whole diatribe...without knowing what the new logo is. Worked up about the change, having now learned its details without knowing the result, I take a look. Yahoo.com. New logo...meh. It screams "corporate" without the big-budget expensive-talent origin. It speaks of whimsy and cross-discipline inventiveness...beaten into submission by an unhappy "you did my job and now I have to clean up the mess" department. The problem isn't that they didn't pay a large sum for its development, it's that there are people who are very good at such things (be it highly paid or tangential hobby) and none of them were on the weekend team. I'm reminded of the story of Steve Jobs calling a top guy at Google late one weekend to complain that their shade of yellow was wrong - and he was right.

pagekicker 13y ago

Great post and spot-on.

yesimahuman 13y ago

Not to discount the technical analysis, but it still begs the question of whether any of those points matter for non-designers, or for the business. Just because they didn't go through an agency doesn't mean the logo won't be successful and the attention won't help the business. I hate to bring up Google, but they've done pretty well despite having a history of logos no self-respecting agency would ever produce.

rubinelli 13y ago
Yeah, I feel for those agencies, and at times like this I'm glad to be a software developer. A whippersnapper may say he can do my job over a weekend, but delivering it is another thing entirely. I don't think we have to bring up Google. In fact, we don't even have to go beyond Yahoo. For all the talk on design and building a strong visual identity, Yahoo in its glory days was visually atrocious. And it didn't mater a lick.
- colmvp 13y ago
  Because it just had to do a set of things functionally right. Whereas branding is more important in an industry where products are similar to one another in function, like consumer goods.

netrus 13y ago

I do not agree. The reason logos usually are expensive and take months: Because what else? If I have a multi-million Dollar marketing budget, sure the logo will take a good chunk of that, not only, say one permille (still enough to pay 5 designers for a week). If I want to change the perception of my company, I will not rush. Does this mean the logo will perform better than one a design student made over the weekend? No. Do many months of work prevent a failure? No. In the end, Yahoo wants profit through revenue through site usage through loyal users. Does letter spacing have an influence on this? I doubt it.

sfjailbird 13y ago
Seems like anti-intellectualism. Just because you can't recognize an outstanding logo doesn't mean there is no such thing - it is an art form and a science, which is the reason there are superstars in the field who command hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees. (Whether or not a logo has a real impact on business performance is another discussion.)
- bruceboughton 13y ago
  And superstars can still fuck up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6327544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6327544
- JRFuentes7 13y ago
  True, which reminded me of one such superstar, Paul Rand, who designed the NeXT logo for Steve Jobs. http://stocklogos.com/topic/famous-logo-designs-and-how-much-did-they-cost http://stocklogos.com/topic/famous-logo-designs-and-how-much...
  - snogglethorpe 13y ago
    > one such superstar, Paul Rand, who designed the NeXT logo for Steve Jobs ... and rather more famously, he designed the IBM logo, which is arguably one of the most famous and well-respected logos in history.

sfjailbird 13y ago

I agree with this assessment - apparently taking this task so lightly (especially given the poor outcome) is a baffling and shocking misstep, so bad that I have to think hard about if there is some hidden angle I'm not seeing, some genius act of extremely subtle performance marketing. It would seem extreme to judge a CEO by something relatively trivial and unimportant such as this, but honestly the way this project was handled makes me very bearish on Yahoo under Mayer.

bruceboughton 13y ago

>> And what is more efficient than working directly with the CEO on the brand identity? A dream setup. Also, it’s cheap. A weekend for a logo, instead of paying a branding agency millions and waiting months for something that can be done in a couple of days? That’s smart business! >> Is it? Yes. People will bitch about your logo whether you paid $100mn for it or hacked it over the weekend. Logos, like names, don't actually matter much. It is the change that is important, not the design.

SimianLogic2 13y ago

How I perceived this article: I'm a thoughtful designer and pissed off that an "amateur" CEO is dipping her toes in my sandbox. Also, if I can bill a client for months of logo design and they see a Fortune 500 CEO doing it themselves they may question if I'm worth it. (I know nothing about the author, so this is just my perception.) Yes, there's some validity to calling out the bullshit in Mayer's fluffy post. But equally mixed in are just as many nonsense bits...

VeejayRampay 13y ago

I think the logo looks awful. It looked awful in the first place anyway but it's well recognized and branded so I guess it doesn't matter much.

solistice 13y ago

Did anyone actually notice the logo changed? I didn't, and frankly, it seems like such a little change, I doubt many even noticed. Changing your logo to change your brand identity is the business equivalent of buying new running shoes to start shaping up. It doesn't quite work, does it? So I'm glad they didn't spend thousands and ten thousands of dollars on a new logo, because if the logo change is just ego stroking for the CEO, there isn't much use of spending months and awe-inspiring sums on it (like that matters).

AliEzer 13y ago

I totally disagree. And yes, it is just a logo. Google logo is still looking like it was made by a 10 years old. Sounds like the author is trying to justify his daily rate. Come on. And when big companies pay millions for a logo, it's not just for the logo itself, it's for all the identity of the company. Yahoo! changed its logo but the majority of the people won't even notice.

brianfryer 13y ago

ENOUGH with adding more fodder to the HN circlejerk of trashing Yahoo!.

GBiT 13y ago

Twitter for its first logo paid 15$

mattzito 13y ago

It seems odd that the writer first bashes MM for just getting in a room with some designers over a weekend, criticizing the concept of doing something so important in such a slapdash fashion, and then bashes her for polling the company about what they'd like to see in the logo, because it's "Design by polling". But - doesn't that show they did a lot of work upfront, that it wasn't just a slapdash effort? The whole article reads like a bitter rant from the company that didn't get hired to do the work, instead of a thoughtful discussion of the logo itself (I'm not saying that iA was in the running to do the work, just that the tone is oddly hostile).

jonnathanson 13y ago
The whole thing feels like a marketing play, to be honest. An attempt to gain some attention by riding the media wave about the new Yahoo logo. There's nothing wrong with that, per se. Plenty of agencies, SaaS companies, and service providers do it. Hell, plenty of agencies get hired to do it on behalf of their clients. What rankles here is the tone. As you say, it reads "bitter." The author's confrontational style does him no favors. It piques our interest in his agenda (whatever it may be), rather than in his content.
slantyyz 13y ago
>> the tone is oddly hostile I wouldn't read much into his tone. He tends to be very opinionated, and he tends to express his opinions in a fashion very much like Linus Torvalds.
- temuze 13y ago
  There's a difference between opinionated and rude. I don't think rude in a company blog makes the organization look good. I'd be less likely to hire them because it seems they can't provide constructive criticism without being jerks.
  - slantyyz 13y ago
    Some people use a "shock jock" tone as a tool for self-promotion. The article did manage to make it to the front page of HN, after all. And while the tone may turn some people off (myself included), it is probably the right tone and post for the target market of the OP's products.

moron4hire 13y ago

Whenever I hear someone say "not being professional", I replace "being professional" with "conforming to my overly narrow world view." While professionalism is an important concept, it has never been the case that I have seen it referenced properly. Instead, it's usually just some SJ who can't sleep at night unless everyone fits into a little box.

toddmorey 13y ago

I've been around adverting for a long time. I've been in agencies, I've freelanced, I've been the client. I've worked with individuals that charge $70/hr and teams that charge $20,000 per day. The author is completely right on one point: "...the saying in design: 'if it looks right, it is right.'” Here's the dirty secret: All logos are designed in a momentary collision of experience and accident. All logos are, in a sense, designed in a weekend. That doesn't mean it isn't done thoughtfully. But that huge research spend? It sometimes guides the design a little, but it's mostly there to reverse-justify the final result (and of course expense) with the client. He's also asking us to assume the only thought Yahoo ever put into their logo and apparently, their brand, was that one 36-hour period. And the implication of course is that a large spend with an agency would result in a design that's both more calculated and less contrived. As the author says, bullshit.

mcantelon 13y ago
Yeah, given how easy it is for folks to learn the tools of their profession, graphic designers have an interest in aggrandizing their roles. The Nike logo was designed for $35 by a graphic design student rather than an experienced firm. Phil Knight said he didn't "love" it, but it would work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoosh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoosh
- mietek 13y ago
  Learning the tools is not the same as learning the skills. Of course, learning anything is easy — just practice for 10,000 hours and you're all set!
  - adestefan 13y ago
    You're missing the point. The point is the logo really doesn't mean squat. In the long run in it's the products and/or the advertisement with the logo tacked on.
gbhn 13y ago
Yes, I definitely get the feeling of "breaking news! multi-million dollar logo consultant believes everyone should buy logos for 10 million dollars!"

izolate 13y ago

If Yahoo! really wanted to signal their change towards modernity and freshness, they were already sitting on their perfect logo: http://i.imgur.com/VpAwbwS.png http://i.imgur.com/VpAwbwS.png

luscious 13y ago

Says the guy with a 'strategic design' firm... Bullshit player lobbing bullshit claims at bullshit. Maybe he's A/B-ing some secondary bullshit article to see what can get better rank on HN. What's the best link bait for placating boredom and wasting attention on derivative industries suckling at the teat.

gamache 13y ago

There are some CEOs who think they can do anything, and design logotype over the weekend. There are other CEOs who think they can do anything, and start their own space program (with an electric car company on the side).

guynamedloren 13y ago
And there are other CEOs who think they can do anything, but don't. Instead, they do nothing, and sometimes those companies die. Let's be glad there are CEOs to talk about that are doing things.
- gamache 13y ago
  They sure are glad there are people to applaud them for doing bullshit.
- colmvp 13y ago
  And then there are CEOs who trust their team to make things and don't micromanage every aspect.
arbutus 13y ago
I suppose Elon Musk has spent every single past weekend starting a space program, and Marissa Mayer has no potential to ever achieve anything lofty enough to appease you ever in the entire future.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
CmonDev 13y ago
That's a space program without actual space travel so far. And that's an electric car company that has a very limited amount of presence all of which is in USA (power stations etc.). The guy is talented but let's cut the hype a bit.
- wtracy 13y ago

coldpie 13y ago

Hang on, hang on. People still visit Yahoo?

elliottcarlson 13y ago
http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/8/comScore_Media_Metrix_Ranks_Top_50_U.S._Web_Properties_for_July_2013 http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/8/comSc...

smacktoward 13y ago

I'm of two minds on this piece. On the one hand, the author is absolutely right that a good professional designer can bring things to the process that enthusiastic amateurs cannot. A really good logo doesn't just look cool, it communicates something about the nature and spirit of the company visually. It lays down a marker: "this is who we are." A designer who knows the grammar of visual communication will have a better chance of delivering that than will someone who doesn't. On the other hand, the author sadly doesn't do a great job of arguing the above point. Rather than, say, taking some great logos and pulling them apart for us to show how they do what they do, we just hear a lot of complaints about how the way Yahoo did theirs was "unprofessional." It makes it sound like the main complaint is that Yahoo had the gall to cut designers out of the process rather than that they chose a path that was more likely to result in a crappy logo, which strikes me as a more powerful (and accurate) complaint. In other words, outside the community of professional designers, nobody cares if Marissa Mayer hurt some designers' feelings. What they care about is how Marissa Mayer is stewarding the Yahoo brand. If you want to convince them that your way is right and her way is wrong, don't show them how her way threatens your business; show them how her way threatens her business.

malaporte 13y ago
Well said.
emhart 13y ago
I disagree, he actually makes it clear on multiple occasions throughout the piece that his critique is not about the end product of the logo and what could or could not have happened in the hands of a real designer. His critique is about her unserious approach to the process, an approach that she then justified in a cloud of post-process rationalization. His critique is saying that if this is the way she treats the logo redesign (even celebrates the casualness of the approach) then is she actually a competent steward for the Yahoo brand. I think it's a question worth asking and find that many of the comments here seem very focused on the debate about the merits of the logo design, rather than the question of brand management which both the piece, and thankfully your comment, at least attempt to address.

jpswade 13y ago

What the writer fails to notice is that the reason there is a lack of technicalities surrounding the logo is that it's clearly an emotional decision, not a logical one.

uptown 13y ago

Yahoo!'s challenge isn't their logo. Yahoo!'s challenge is ensuring their brand becomes associated with whatever they do best. When I think of Google I think of search, ads, and Android, and GMail. When I think of Microsoft I think of Windows, Office and XBOX. When I think of Apple I think of the iPhone, and the iPad. When I think of Facebook I think of photos and privacy (lack thereof). When I think of Yahoo there's no defining correlation to anything. I realize many people frequent their services - but personally Yahoo! doesn't stand out as "best" for anything, and I don't even know what direction they intend to pursue to change that perception.

mbesto 13y ago

Ha, I just wrote something very similiar about this: http://www.techdisruptive.com/2013/09/04/logo-doesnt-matter/ http://www.techdisruptive.com/2013/09/04/logo-doesnt-matter/ No, it’s not getting attention. It’s gaining trust. Ironically, for that you need a reflective, clear, and consistent brand identity. A different logo powered by bullshit doesn’t convey identity and trustworthiness. It conveys desperation. While the overall sentiment of the article is sound, I slightly disagree with this. First, this whole story of "creating the logo in a weekend" with an "intern who did some motion graphics to convey it's uniformity" is pure and simple, a publicity stunt, and a good one at that.[1] Personally I don't think there is an intern named Max who did that (most likely an agency), but this subtly conveys the perception of something that Yahoo is missing - innovation by small teams. The reality is that Yahoo does have a brand problem (just as MS does in the consumer-mobile space), so they have two tactics they need to implement in order to properly manage the brand: 1. Change the perception of the brand (changing the logo to match the new found brand perception is a good way to do that) 2. Create buzz around the fact that the perception has now changed. Marissa's plan for the logo did just that. I think it's a good strategy and something Stringer Bell would have been taught in his business class.[2] [1]-http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/60336044815/geeking-out-on-the-logo http://marissamayr.tumblr.com/post/60336044815/geeking-out-o... [2]-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbbZc2pab9k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbbZc2pab9k

emhart 13y ago
THAT is a very interesting thought and addresses the article on its own terms. I was getting a bit weary of the designer-ego bashing. The idea that the story they are trying to tell is one of rapid innovation in small teams is a really excellent observation, and if that is what she is truly trying to accomplish it's very interesting. That said, where does the 30 days of logos fit in? Just as a ramp to draw additional attention to the CEO blog post?
- mbesto 13y ago
  I think the 30 days of logos is an ongoing engagement that achieves two things: 1) Provides an on-going set of buzz. You'll have heaps of people criticizing a lot of the logos. The PR value is absolutely massive for a 30 day event. 2) Reinforces the perception that Yahoo is open, creative and is "listening to it's users". I was getting a bit weary of the designer-ego bashing I don't think the designer-ego bashing was unwarranted, since I agree with the author on that premise. What the author failed to recognize is why this PR move was written this way.

felix 13y ago

I'd say the most annoying part (of so many annoying parts) was when he says: "The hard part is defining what your brand is and what it aims to become." And then somehow supports that with the opposite: "Is Yahoo “whimsical, yet sophisticated. Modern and fresh […] human, personal […] proud”? Currently, Yahoo is not associated with being whimsical or sophisticated, rather it is mostly boring and dull. It doesn’t portray modernity or freshness, it feels obsolete and dated." Apparently had he been hired, he'd have designed a logo to what he believes are Yahoo's current brand - dullness and obsolescence instead of what he suggested at the outset which is what you want your brand to be.

antidaily 13y ago

Did eBay's new logo get this criticized? Because it's infinitely worse. Then again, the CEO probably didnt work on i, which seems to be the major gripe.

evolve2k 13y ago

For me spending weeks and months of valuable time achieving a utopian logo would be the greater waste. I personally am very supportive of this let's get everyone we need to in the room and lets get it done approach. It bodes well for how MM might go about solving larger issues facing the company.

pejer 13y ago

I bet this is just a hoax and when the rage is at its peak, the real logo will be revealed. TADA! We ARE a whimsical company, yay for fooling all of you!

dedsm 13y ago

so, the whole logo is bad because Yahoo didn't pay millions of dollars on it?

vladsanchez 13y ago

Well said! It's all BS. A marketing feat that only conveys desperation.

paulsutter 13y ago

Yahoo really needs an internal culture of agility, listening to customers, and working weekends. She wants employees reminded of that every time they look at the logo, even if it means having a logo that's 10% less ideal.

joshuaellinger 13y ago
Yeah, I think the audience for this is internal. It is her way of saying that I can and will fix this company even if I have to do every bit myself. Maybe that is what Yahoo! needs to get moving. Crazy way to run a $10B company. I think the danger sign in this story is not a sub-standard logo but what it says about her inability to delegate.
- smacktoward 13y ago
  > It is her way of saying that I can and will fix this company even if I have to do every bit myself. A message that I'm sure will really build trust and cohesion among the rest of the people she works with. "You people are such losers I have to do your jobs as well as mine" is not exactly a rousing call to unity.
  - colmvp 13y ago
    Indeed. Do I really want the CEO of a company breathing down my neck everytime I'm designing or releasing something?
keithpeter 13y ago
"...and working weekends." Why the working weekends bit? Is Yahoo short of people? Can they not plan their projects? Not trolling, just interested.

dnyanesh 13y ago

If Marissa Mayer hadn't mentioned about the time taken to design the logo, this post wouldn't exist.

lotsofcows 13y ago

I like this sentence: "Your brand architecture is your information architecture." In italics no less. Could someone tell me what it means?

gbrindisi 13y ago
Buzzword bingo.

Terretta 13y ago

> Next she should try the same with Yahoo’s server architecture. Ask everyone about the best server configuration and then put together a brief for the system administrators. Well, yeah, actually. Given a server architecture problem and a company still somewhat silo'd with devops scattered on various teams, asking everyone to weigh in on the architecture would be likely to improve the plan over a single person or even single team coming up with it. Think of the Jainist tale of the blind men and the elephant to understand why. People unlikely to be able to contribute won't have a strong opinion, while people able to contribute will, from their viewpoint. Strong opinions here represent gaps in what's being done versus what may be needed. And while you may still get a bell curve type of response, you're looking for business case viewpoints that might not otherwise have been considered and tech ideas from the tails that may give you a competitive edge. I think the author's sarcasm here falls especially flat. When it comes to a logo, even more so. Logos are about appealing to people, trying to convey something that people connect with. Employees like to feel proud of where they work. Their identity gets wrapped up in the company identity. Asking the whole team what they feel about identity is a great data point. And more cynically, now all these employees feel as though their suggestions were listened to. Come to Yahoo, where your ideas matter. What a great place to work! I'm disappointed in iA for suggesting employees shouldn't have a voice in how they see and relate to their own brand symbols.

njr123 13y ago
> People unlikely to be able to contribute won't have a strong opinion Oh man, you are so so wrong. Sure the people who know nothing won't contribute, but there will be a large number of people who know 'just enough to be dangerous' with very strong opinions that are not only wrong, but so completely obviously wrong you will not even know how to respond. And (in this hypothetical exersize), you will have to spend the next 2 months explaining to all of them why their ideas won't be used, at the same time without offending anyone.
- Terretta 13y ago
  The people whose opinions are both fervent and wrong will tend to be either outliers, or mostly wrong the same (junior) way, and easily filtered out assuming you have any amount of expertise yourself. The opinions you aren't sure about are exactly the opinions your team should have a look at. What you're looking for are insights about business requirements or outside the box solutions you yourself missed or didn't stumble on. You're cynically mining the group as a business knowledge and solution brainstorming source, with an open mind to any wisdom it offers but with a healthy grain of salt. And no, you don't have to explain why each individual idea won't be used, if up front you say, "Our time and resources are limited, so unfortunately we just won't be able to do everything everyone suggests." If whether you offend is important to you and large numbers of people are likely to take offense because they're too clueless that not every single idea can be reconciled at the same time, your company may not be suited to this exercise. If whether you offend is important to you and only small numbers of people will take offense, wrap up after the feedback with "Wow, everyone, fantastic input. While not every idea will make it into the product, every single idea helped inform our approach. Thanks to each and every one of you!" In other words, respond in the aggregate, not individually. Finally, if you're talking about large numbers of people and you don't have the authority to, or you don't know how to, respond to people in aggregate, then this approach isn't for you.

pagekicker 13y ago

Great post and spot-on.

alphadogg 13y ago

Two words: confirmation bias.

Pxtl 13y ago

Personally, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. I think the unprofessionalism, the BS, the Mayer-hands-on thing... that is part of Yahoo's new branding strategy. It's all about making Yahoo feel more personal. More like your friend. Mayer is trying to personally invite you out for coffee to and talk about the fun she had bashing out their logo. I'm sure there are refinements that are happening behind-the-scenes after Mayer's "weekend". Hopefully resized forms of the logo will still get some TLC - the public doesn't generally notice when those things happen. Remember the demographic that Yahoo survived upon - women. Non-geeky grown-up middle-class women. That's why the new logo reminds you of a department store like Macy's, or the makeup counter at Shoppers Drug Mart. That's who Mayer is targeting with this ad, even this blog. It's a huge number of people that most of the technorati ignore - Facebook captured that market practically by accident, and Pinterest is exploding because somebody finally thought to actually aim in that direction on purpose. And what's pinterest about? Craftsmanship. Craftswomanship. Getting your hands dirty on a fun little artistic project. Like making a logo. Latter-day Yahoo has always found strength in ignoring the geek elite. They lost the geek elite a long time ago. This includes you, design geeks.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
> Remember the demographic that Yahoo survived upon - women interesting - can you tell me more? Whats the source of this (not challenging you, just want to quote it in the future :-) edit: reminds me of Whistler / Wilde reparte: Wilde: James, that was hilarious, I wish I had said it. Whistler: You will dear boy, you will.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  Read it a few years ago... can't find the link anymore. Article said that the things that kept Yahoo alive were finance, women, and sports, and I bet they lost that finance thing since then. edit: best I can find is this article pointing out Yahoo mail's 63% female userbase, but it's pretty thin. http://blog.hunch.com/?p=34824 http://blog.hunch.com/?p=34824
  - 13y ago

mathattack 13y ago

When I read purple prose about logos, I keep thinking, "Let's just measure this to see if what they're saying is right." In general the soft-speak of brands, design and logo can move into meaninglessness. I know it's important. Design is why Apple succeeds. But it also should be something that can be explained in plain (and perhaps measurable) English.

progx 13y ago

What is better? Write about an own Logo or write a monstrous post about someone, who write about her own Logo ;-)

sidcool 13y ago

Wow, someone got pissed!

secstate 13y ago

There's gotta be some law of marketing at work here ... yahoo is the pepsi to google's coke ;-)

at-fates-hands 13y ago

The ironic thing is their old logo is still in a ton of places, like in their Fantasy Football image on their main login page: https://login.yahoo.com https://login.yahoo.com You can also Google it and the image on the right hand side is still the old logo. As much as she wanted to change it, they sure didn't do a good job of scrubbing their properties of the old logo.

rocky1138 13y ago
This link shows me the new logo.

jrs235 13y ago

I think "it's" working. "Negative" publicity is better than no publicity. Look at us! We're talking about Yahoo! now. EDIT: My point being: perhaps it's not about their logo or the importance of a logo and many of you aren't seeing the bigger picture/goal/objective...

hkuo 13y ago

The author fails to make an important distinction about the people that created the logo. It's one thing to say that a design agency came in and designed a logo in a weekend. It's another thing to say an internal design team bared down to create a logo in a "weekend" (in quotes, because Marissa may simply be using the term to mean done in a short timespan). I've worked on both the agency and client side, and the huge difference is that an agency comes in and has to learn very quickly about the client's business (more often than not getting it wrong the first time around) while the people working at the company live and breathe the company culture day in and out. At an agency, you're often jumping between a few clients, but unless you've been the agency of record for a number of years, it is simply not possible for you to have the depth of understanding that an internal marketing team will have. What an agency CAN bring is some fresh outsider thinking not colored by the company's history, but there's no reason the right people within the company can do so as well.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Wow, that was a great read. So many great collisions of emotions and ideas. After reading it I understood that the author was deeply offended by the characterization that the Yahoo! logo could be redesigned in a weekend. I get that, they work at a high end logo design studio, it's like telling a Ferrari mechanic you spent the weekend with some tools from Pep boys and tuned your Ferrari to give it an additional 15% BHP. The dissonance of knowing, as a professional in the space, what it takes to re-design a logo, and Marissa's characterization of the same, really irked this guy. That left me wondering how much of that irritation was professional pride. The meta point the author is trying to make, which is that brand and logo are intertwined but the dependency relationship is backwards in Marissa's post, reminded me of the clothes argument. That is the argument about the phrase "The clothes make the man." The two sides of that argument are that your a better person if you dress well, and if you dress well you are a better person. Which follows which? Can that even be resolved? I had this discussion with my teenage daughter when she wanted to dress like a pop star, who dressed like a slut. We had the whole talk about how clothes are a sort of 'marketing' for the person you are, and people will set their interactions with you to how you dress first, and the way they know you second. So if their first setting is 'slut' then you may get so pissed off at them that they never get to see the real you, and a friendship opportunity is missed. So our author has extrapolated that it is how you are as a company, that emerges in your logo, not your logo defines how you are as a company. And I tend to agree with that, but I also know that companies evolve based on how they see themselves. So the argument that Marissa is trying to create a perception which then manifests as reality is certainly plausible. I know when Yahoo! called me a while back (in the Carol Bartz days) and said they were looking for engineering leadership for the Web's #1 media company I thought "Hmm, this is a company that is not in touch with what they are." but it was what they were trying to be. So my summary of the article is that the author's pride was wounded by Marissa making it sound like Logo design was trivial, and attacked both her understanding of logos and the whole branding process in response. Along the way he gave us a couple of interesting things to think about.

csbrooks 13y ago
> I had this discussion with my teenage daughter As a parent, I'm picturing you giving this very articulate and coherent argument, and her stomping her feet saying "dad! I hate you!" and storming off. :)

5teev 13y ago

Historical note about the logo illustration at the top of the essay (which predates the well-known red logo): it was internally referred to as "Uncle Stinky".

ethagknight 13y ago

Logo, Bullshit & Co is quite a self-important read. Sure, Mayer's approached is unconventional for a large corporation, and it is more in line with a bootstrapping startup. Yahoo is in financial dire straights, so it is totally reasonable for Mayer to try an unconventional approach, save serious marketing dollars, and go her own way. We don't have to love the result, but at the end of the day, Mayer gave the brand a new face, and she didn't pay much for it.

Kurinys 13y ago

I like the fact that you argue the point that yahoo's brand is or is not: (insert completely meaningless addwords)

kens 13y ago

Five years from now, the logo will be the perfect hook for articles about Marissa Mayer and Yahoo. If Yahoo does well, the logo incident will show her brilliance and how her hands-on work saved the company. If Yahoo does poorly, the logo will be an emblem of how her micromanagement and distraction from the core business ruined the company. What I'm trying to say is that the stories told in retrospect always make what happens seem obvious, but looking forward, it's impossible to know.

devanti 13y ago

it's simple. yahoo's new logo is just bad. it's exactly what too much thought and group think does. the logo isn't even aligned properly on their homepage

atacrawl 13y ago

The fact of the matter is that none of us knows exactly happened that weekend, including whether it was really a weekend at all. But I think what offends so many people (myself, to a certain extent, included) is that this whole episode, as it has played out publicly, represents a certain obnoxiousness that so many of us have experienced -- executives that are in over their head inserting themselves into processes they have no business being part of, leading to results that are at best mediocre. Between Mayer's self-aggrandizing "'we' did it" post and the amateur hour "30 logos in 30 days" stunt, the situation resembles a farce. Marissa Mayer was supposed to be Yahoo's brilliant savior, so why is she playing the role of a stereotypical clueless CEO? These Onion stories in tandem seem appropriate here. http://www.theonion.com/articles/executive-creative-too,31024/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/executive-creative-too,3102... http://www.theonion.com/video/ceo-has-special-knack-for-recognizing-great-ideas,33677/ http://www.theonion.com/video/ceo-has-special-knack-for-reco... (minor edits)

Prefinem 13y ago

Honestly, it seems to me that the author is upset when a 10 billion dollar company just gave a big F you to the design community, and this is a little hissy fit. Look at all the news it generated, look at all the people talking about it. Change, The big old giant company is changing. And seriously, having worked with a few designers, they are the biggest little bitch when they feel insulted because you didn't come to them for "fashion" sense on design. Reading from a developer's viewpoint, this article is about an "artist" whining because a 10 billion dollar company said/showed that you can do their "month" long work in a weekend. The author's "this is unprofessional" is an attack that yahoo isn't playing by his rules.

ErikAugust 13y ago

Read "I'm Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google Employee...". I'm surprised no one has referenced the book. Fiddling with logos was (and still is) considered a bit sacreligious when it comes to branding but in the case of Google in the early 2000s, it was a big hit - what is now Google Doodles. Those were attributed partially to Marissa Mayer implementing the idea "over the weekend with the help of a designer".