In case you’d forgotten, or more likely hadn’t noticed, Yahoo! is rolling out a new logo today, after spending thirty days showing off “old” logos. Yes, they’ve wanted us to get excited over typefaces, and I write “us” because I’ve had a Yahoo! email address for more than a decade now. And above is the end result.
First of all, it is kind of condescending to try and get us hyped up over a logo. “Here, get excited about a signifier for a brand that few people will actually care about, and as a brand, barely even qualifies as a logo!” Secondly, a month of demanding attention for this? This has an announcement video, because of course it does.
According to Yahoo!:
We wanted a logo that stayed true to our roots (whimsical, purple, with an exclamation point) yet embraced the evolution of our products.
So really shouldn’t that be this?:
Needling Yahoo! aside, consider that, during the month, and I’ve noticed these things because Yahoo! has done everything short of forcibly tattoo them on my forehead over the last month as I’ve tried to check my email, we’ve seen logos like this:
Which at least actually evokes a person saying something, even if it does inflict painful flashbacks of the Yahoo! “theme song”, which is a yodeler dying. Or how about this?
OK, so it looks like a sports team; the Yahoos taking the field against the Hicks, but at least it’s got some dynamism. The really sad thing is that the only reason I noticed today is that my Yahoo! mail happens to keep going down. I’ll get excited when Yahoo! rolls out a new product, not a new logo.