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Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- phpnode 13y agothe white logo in the header bar still looks like Y fronts![0] 0. in the UK.
- adestefan 13y agoI didn't even know what Y fronts are and it looks like underwear. Even the new one that's not suppose to still looks like underwear.
- Pxtl 13y agoYeah, that. I assume their rebranding is incomplete.
- harvestmoon 13y agoThe logo keeps on making me giggle. It looks like underwear to me. I don't know if I'd have seen it without reading this article, but now that it's in my head, it's hard to get out.
- jug6ernaut 13y agoWhy does it say UK saw underpants was "26%" when the chart right above says "2.6%"?
- alan_cx 13y agoI see 26, not 26%. 26 is 2.6% of 1000. (Just woken up and I am a bit blurry, so, I might be tragically wrong)
- jug6ernaut 13y agoYes I believe you are correct.
- alan_cx 13y agoThank the gods for that. Getting that wrong would have been total pants....
- alan_cx 13y agoI would not have said pants to start with, but now its been said, all I can see is pants. [0] Maybe this is more about the power of suggestion 0. UK, where pants is pants and not trousers. ;) Edit: Also, pants is a UK way of saying rubbish. So, "that web site is a load of pants", might be said. Might be a sense of humor at work here.
- goatforce5 13y agoI spilled some coffee on some light coloured trousers on the way to the London office. The stain was centered right in my lap and I couldn't really go around like that all day, so I stopped and bought some cheap trousers at Gap to sort me out. Pro-tip: Telling your local UK colleagues that you were running late because you stained your pants and needed to get new pants, and then offering to show people the stained pants is going to lead to some awkward moments.
- alan_cx 13y agoAh, wonderfully divided by a common language!!!! :) "Fanny" is a great cause of transatlantic fun too. And if you are a Brit in the US, never ever say, "Im diving out for a fag". You're gonna get some odd looks.
- squidi 13y agoIt's spelled internationaliSation (joke!)
- JonnieCache 13y agoI don't see any underwear, but the thing definitely looks better with thinner lines. It brings out the 3d shading more. Presumably that's why more people recognise the geometry after the change.
- victoriap 13y agoI had the same issue, couldn't see the underwear at all. And finally after seeing the people in pictures, I can see. Internalization requires a lot of effort.
- blackdogie 13y agoPost mentions Google Comsumer Surveys http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/pricing http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/pricing at $0.10 for targeted and $0.50 for targeted (age , gender, etc) responses this seems like a great way for getting feedback quick. Has anyone got any experience doing them ? Does anyone know how these people answer surveys, is there a web portal for people to sign up to do them ?
- prezjordan 13y agoLooks like Google embeds this survey directly into content on many sites, probably through AdSense tags? I'm not sure, I don't think I've ever seen one.
- blackdogie 13y agoJust did some more research, they have outlined a bit here http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/how http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/how sometimes it unlocks content (and the publisher gets a slip of the fee). It seems that they somehow have you already targeted to a 10% accuracy level based on your search history. Their case studies are also worth checking http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/use_cases http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/use_cases
- JunkDNA 13y agoI've seen them smack dab in the middle of boston.com "The Big Picture". You basically can't look at more than a few of the photos without answering a google survey question. For me, looking at this page now asks me who my auto insurance provider is with: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2013/10/broken_lives_of_fukushima.html http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2013/10/broken_lives_of_fuk...
- carlob 13y agoIt must be blocked by AdBlock, because I've never seen one. I'm realizing now I'm missing a pretty large part of the web, by using AdBlock and Ghostery: most social share buttons, ads, Disqus comments… I should probably go on the unadulterated web one day a month, just to see what it looks like.
- andyhmltn 13y agoI have to admit I'm from the UK and I saw exactly that. Why?!
- potatolicious 13y agoI'm from Canada and saw the same... but I'm going to go with being primed by the title >_>
- alan_cx 13y agoCould be basque the title suggested it? Note: I miss typed "because", and the spelling suggestion was "basque". Given I like an amusing typo, and the given subject, I simply had to leave it as is....
- andyhmltn 13y agoPossibly, but I went into the article thinking it was going to be about a poorly designed logo from a freelancer or one of those amusing situations where their company name means something weird in another language. I didn't for a second think 'looks like underpants' was literal haha
- robbfitzsimmons 13y agoI still don't really see the pants, but have in the past been guilty of designing, and using for two months in production, a logo that a focus group decided was "swastika-esque." So maybe don't listen to me.
- rpedela 13y agoWhat is wrong with people thinking the logo looks like underwear? I am willing to bet people are more likely to remember the logo and company. I remember when everyone was making fun of the name "Wii", but I would be surprised if that name, which generated free publicity, did not help Nintendo. If the logo reminded people of genocide, okay change it. But underwear? Seems like a good thing to me since they might remember it better.
- leephillips 13y agoThe site chooses to use the type of social media buttons that tracks users, puts them in a fixed position, and, on my browser, the buttons obscure part of the text. I don't stick around long enough on sites like this to read any articles.
- molf 13y agoThe first logo is not a dodecahedron; the geometry is wrong. In reality it would be impossible to see all the three faces drawn at the edge of the logo from the same perspective. Perhaps people subtly pick up on this geometric imprecision and more easily associate it with something else?
- moocowduckquack 13y agoIf it was a small dodecahedron, like about the size of a dice, you would see those three faces unless you closed an eye.
- Domenic_S 13y agoTrivia: 'die' is the singular form of the plural 'dice'.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoExtra trivia, so is dice. http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/dice?q=dice http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/dice?q=dice
- Domenic_S 13y agoYeah, that's a position the Oxford dictionary took but it's not common. Although I guess the singular 'die' is only really popular with dice nerds. http://grammarist.com/usage/dice-die/ http://grammarist.com/usage/dice-die/ http://www.websource.it/search/%22a%20die%22/%22a%20dice%22 http://www.websource.it/search/%22a%20die%22/%22a%20dice%22
- moocowduckquack 13y agoAy, I ken alright t'speak proper like.
- bernardom 13y agoPeople who thought the logo was underwear before they put it on the front page of HN: 2.6% of Britons who read their website. People who thought the logo was underwear now: (How many people read a frontpage HN article?)
- nik61 13y agoIn UK, particularly when international Rugby is being played, the South African flag is sometime derided as the "technicolour Y-fronts".
- agumonkey 13y agoSmall images are often confusing, see http://www.reddit.com/r/misleadingthumbnails/ http://www.reddit.com/r/misleadingthumbnails/
- jonahx 13y agoI see how this would happen with users in London, and I even see france, and come to think of it I can see rjmetrics's underpants!
- porterhaney 13y agoGood tidbit in the conclusion: "Hackathons are an amazing resource for kick-starting new ideas and proving out concepts. However, they should never be used to circumvent due diligence on big business decisions."
- nraynaud 13y agoIt reminds me of this french car named "Pajero", Spain is a neighbor...
- praptak 13y ago"“Dodecahedron” took second place [...] followed by a laundry list of other geometric shapes." Heh, heh, heh, he said "laundry list".
- Jagat 13y agoExactly. When he said "laundry list", I thought he meant a flurry of words that meant Y-fronts.
- kyro 13y agoI would invest in refining that logo even further. I couldn't tell it was a decahedron until you mentioned it. I actually see more underwear in it than I do geometry. The small slivers and color shades also hinder its recognizability and limit its scalability and consistency across multiple mediums.
- jnardiello 13y agoEven without the article, first thing i saw: Y-front. PS: I'm from Italy. Maybe it's a Europe thing.
- derekp7 13y agoIt's funny how things like this only look like another object once someone mentions it. For example, when my step kids were little, they used to constantly ask about the "underwear" signs posted all over the place. Couldn't figure out what they were talking about, until I had them point it out sitting at a red light. The traffic lights have stop signs that are folded down, and get unfolded when there are problems with the signals. So the bottom half of a white octagon does look like a pair of briefs.
- polskibus 13y agoWouldn't an association with pants be better than a mere geometric shape? If it stays in ones memory for longer, then why the hell not? It's all about being recognized by the customer!
- adam12 13y agoThat reminds of that commercial for the Universal Technical Institute. It's funny hearing that guy tell me all the great things about "UTI". I probably wouldn't remember the commercial if they had some other boring acronym.
- tekmate 13y agowhy would they settle on a skewed 3d view of the dodecahedron as a replacement. it doesn't look like a logo at all now
- steven2012 13y agoDoes it really matter what 2-3% of a random sampling of people think in a single country? Could this possibly be too sensitive to trying to please too many people?
- madaxe 13y ago3% of the UK population = ~3m potential customers or detractors, so yes.
- dave5104 13y agoEven so... only about 3% decided to answer with underwear. I imagine it may have crossed an even larger percentage of user's minds, but they didn't want to answer with that.
- steven2012 13y ago3% of the UK population does not translate into 3M potential customers for their particular product, which appears to be some sort of Big Data service. It might translate into 1 or 2 customers out of those UK businesses that might actually need their services.
- bjterry 13y agoIt's odd that no one has mentioned this, but part of the reason no American thought they looked like "Y-fronts" is because American briefs don't have a Y-front. I have never seen underwear that looks like the first and third example on the rjmetrics site. If you do a comparative images search for "briefs" and "y-front" I think it'll be pretty obvious.
- stan_rogers 13y agoJockey (and only Jockey, as far as I know) used to have a Y-front, which is one of the reasons they never sold well in Canada. I still completely ignore the brand even though they changed to a more typical fly a couple of decades ago.
- kamjam 13y agoThe term “y-fronts” never caught on the US because American underwear maker Jockey convinced the buying public to use the term “Jockeys” instead. I'm pretty sure I have seen "y-fronts" in US shops and in the movies. The post specifically mentions that people call them jockey briefs in the US.
- kojoru 13y agoSimilar thing has happened to Yandex.Browser in Russia: http://browser.yandex.com/ http://browser.yandex.com/ A couple of vocal geeks suggested its icon looks like underpants on a sphere and now everybody thinks about that when seeing the icon.
- bitwize 13y agoPsh, that's not even as big a logo botch as the Brits committed to themselves: the UK Office of Government Commerce unveiled -- to much tittering and whispering -- a new "OGC" logo back in 2008 which, when rotated ninety degrees clockwise, looked like a stick figure standing and, er, "'aving a wank" in the local slang. OGC quickly reverted to its old logo, correcting the er, boner, but nevertheless in some circles (particularly Reddit), "OGC" remained for some months a sort of shorthand indicating sexual arousal.
- dasil003 13y agoWhat about the London 2012 Olympics logo? That can't be undone, and it can't be unseen once you see it (ie. the Fedex logo effect not in a good way).
- laumars 13y agoI remember when the BBC News aired a goatse interpretation of the London Olympics logo without realising the references being made.
- kamjam 13y agoThe London 2012 logo was a pile pants :) Fortunately, once the games kicked off people forgot about the logo and it was a very successful event by all accounts and there was a huge buzz in the air with everyone (I'm a Londoner). Still can't believe they paid that much money for that!
- bitwize 13y agoThat one offended my design sensibilities before I knew enough to be offended in other ways. It looked like some sort of very-early-90s Nickelodeon thing. Then I saw a specially colored version and... yeah. If you read vertically, turn some letters sideways, and apply liberal amounts of imagination, it looks like "Zion" which was enough to offend the Iranians.
- kamjam 13y ago
- dylandrop 13y agoYou don't have to be from the UK to see that that logo looks like whitey tighteys. (I'm from the US, and while the title of the article definitely solidified how I saw the logo, it still looks like men's underwear to me.) I would suggest adding/removing more sides to the dodecahedron rather than rotating it... ("hendecahedron"? "nonahedron"?)
- mcenedella 13y agoBest enterprise marketing blog post of the year - funny, fact-filled, self-deprecating, clever.
- bickfordb 13y agoI don't understand the brandmark's meaning. It may as well be a swoosh
- smcavinney1 13y agoI don't know if your reference was intentional or not, but check out our old logo: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=rjmetrics%20swoosh&tbs=imgo:1#q=rjmetrics+logo&safe=active&tbm=isch&tbs=imgo:1 https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=rjmetrics%20swoosh&...
- laumars 13y agoThe reason most of those images of underwear didn't look like their logo is because most of those pants (as us Brits refer to them as) were not proper Y-fronts. If you look at this image - bar the colour / pattern of the underwear, it's actually geometrically similar (which the briefs they exampled were not) http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/00418/SNF14WOM01C_280_418335a.jpg http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/00418/SNF14WOM01C...
- meshko 13y agoI think you are missing the point. The problem is that it is just not a good logo. It doesn't mean anything, it doesn't say anything about your company. If you can't come up with a good logo just make your company name the logo. Random geometric figure is not a logo.
- ckelly 13y agoYC-backed Survata (another consumer survey service) released a logo testing tool last month: http://survata.com/logo-surveys http://survata.com/logo-surveys Startups considering new logo options should check it out! Disclosure: I'm a Survata co-founder
- buro9 13y agoMicrosoft Office 2007 came with a new feature, instead of going to the new ribbon at the top you could now highlight a chunk of text and a floating mini-toolbar would appear in which you could access the most-used commands: bold, underline, etc. I remember the program manager demonstrating this to the closed group and announcing proudly that Office now had a `floater`. At which point all of the Brits and South Africans either sniggered or plain exploded with laughter. It took a while for things to settle before it emerged that the Americans in the room didn't see what was so funny, and the Brits and South Africans interpretation of a `floater` was a turd floating in a swimming pool. The name was changed by the next time we saw the feature, if I recall correctly they went for the far less ambiguous "mini toolbar".
- fosap 13y agoWhy does a language have a word for such a thing? Is it common? I haven't even thought about the possibility of the existence of such a thing till now.
- recursive 13y agoI'm solidly American, but I know that definition of "floater" also. I don't know where I learned it. It just kind of seemed like common knowledge.
- MRSallee 13y agoAnyone that grew up going to public swimming pools, with other kids, knows the term. Not necessarily from first-hand experience, but at least from legend.
- Roboprog 13y agoThank you so much. Best laugh I had so far this week. And brave of you to point it out.
- brianmcconnell 13y agoI work on translation technology, and have seen some pretty bad examples of companies choosing names that have bad connotations elsewhere. One of my favorites is Evite, which means "avoid!" in Spanish, not exactly a good name for a party invite service. The all time winner for badly named tech products was the Commodore Pet Computer, which was launched with great fanfare in France (and elsewhere). The only problem is pet means "fart" in French.
- stefap2 13y agoA similar case was a logo mentioned in previous HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6509473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6509473 Once you see it ...