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Comment by marknutter | Hacker News Reader

So let me get this straight: Gap first hires someone to design a logo, and it's universally panned by the design community. They then ask the community "if our new logo is so crappy, why not see if you can do better?" Then, the design community bitches at Gap for not hiring someone to design their logo? Does this seem a bit odd to anybody else?

Also, it's hard to bitch when your whole career depends on something as subjective as logo design. Because of this subjectivity it's possible a design rookie out of high school could design something as cool or cooler than the seasoned professionals, and do it for a fraction of the price (or free). Conversely, that same subjectivity allows people to get away with charging outrageous fees for design work (i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT#cite_ref-rand_16-0)

It seems to me like Gap is damned no matter what they do.

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"Gap first hires someone to design a logo, and it's universally panned by the design community. They then ask the community "if our new logo is so crappy, why not see if you can do better?" Then, the design community bitches at Gap for not hiring someone to design their logo? Does this seem a bit odd to anybody else?"

Designers hate change (most redesigns are going to get panned). But they hate crowdsourcing way more. They were bitching in the first instance because they wanted to keep the old logo, not that they wanted the community to redesign it.

Also, logos for a brick-and-mortar store aren't like logos for a webapp (which a design rookie could do). The logo isn't just going to go on the front of the store, it's going to affect all of the materials in the store — bags/ads/signery/etc are going to be redesigned. Designing a logo as well as the entire branding scheme of the store is vastly different than sticking a cool pic next to a cool font.

I find it almost 100% more interesting that some of the people the design "community" exalts on a frequent basis, and even then some of the community itself didn't present any serious submissions when the call came. They all made fun of the idea that GAP was crowdsourcing a new logo.

That's slacktivism on a level Facebook breast cancer awareness can't even touch.

Participate or stfu is my opinion, but I'm no designer.

Did you even bother reading the article? As a designer I find most of the options presented to be humorous, or sub-standard at best. Nearly all of them miss the mark far worse than Gap's own new logo does. I wouldn't expect any serious submissions simply because why would anyone work for free for a multi-billion dollar corporation?

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