Tech giant Yahoo! is in the process of changing its long serving company logo, which will be revealed on September 5. But until then, the company is giving the world a new logo every day.
The first four days’ worth of logos can be seen below, and seemingly only appeal to hardcore typography fans, as in each case the famous purple colour, exclamation mark and yodel remains the same.
“Over the past year, there’s been a renewed sense of purpose and progress at Yahoo!, and we want everything we do to reflect this spirit of innovation”, CMO Kathy Savitt explained in a company blog.
Savitt added: “It’s our way of having some fun while honouring the legacy of our present logo”, and said of the classic elements the company’s kept: “Some things never go out of style.”
A YouTube video gives a glimpse into the remaining logos. Yet it’s safe to say the change has not been widely acclaimed.
An AdAge piece opened by calling the changes “underwhelming”, with Forrester principal analyst Jim Nail telling the site: “The whole name ‘Yahoo’ and the design of that logo is still very, at best, Web 2.0 if not Web 1.0. It’s a bit dated.”
Some analysts were more sympathetic however, with Deutsch LA’s chief digital officer Winston Binch noting: “Great design can do a lot…it can lead people to reconsider Yahoo!”
But it’s still a difficult point to address, especially as CEO Marissa Mayer is trying to bring her Google experience to the table and bring Yahoo! in line with its younger, supposedly trendier buddies. The acquisition of Tumblr – on which the Yahoo! blog now resides, naturally – was certainly a step in the right direction, but is this?
And there’s another big issue which hasn’t been addressed: whisper it quietly, but a certain search engine provider has been doing a similar thing for years, and indeed even has its own team dedicated to the task.
Yet perhaps the critics are missing the overall point. The ’30 days of change’ YouTube video has garnered over 322,000 views at the time of print, so this campaign is generating eyeballs at what would be considered a relatively inexpensive cost.
But what do you think of Yahoo!’s strategy? Fill out a comment box and let us know…
