New Logo and Identity for Library of Congress | Hacker News Reader

New Logo and Identity for Library of Congress

underconsideration.com

69 pointsprismatic67 comments

I definitely prefer the old logo. The new one feels like it was made in paint using system default fonts. It's not necessarily bad, just feels generic.

I get that Pentagram feels they have enough of a handle on good design that they know the right way to break some of the rules of design. But this feels like breaking the rules of design so much that it's actually breaking the rules, in a way that produces something unpleasant and ugly.

I mean... a close cousin of Impact? Black and orange? A second, unnecessary copy of the word 'library' that's so large it's hard to make out the name of the institution by comparison? This smacks of designers being so in love with their own process that they abandon the basic principles of good design -- i.e., it has to be immediately recognizable and look aesthetically pleasing -- entirely in favor of some weird brutalist experiment.

Which might be a good idea for an avant garde institution in Manhattan, but is entirely inappropriate for the Library of freaking Congress.

It's seriously surprising that a premiere design company produced this.

Contrast this with their excellent identity refresh for American Express: https://www.pentagram.com/work/american-express-1

The difference is night and day. Imagine how fantastic that kind of modernizing light touch could have looked for this client, too.

I think this is pretty horrible, too, though.

I disagree, but I accept that there's a lot of subjectivity to it; the Amex refresh is just that--a refresh of an existing brand identity with very strong recognition, and consistently high brand loyalty. Pentagram managed to refrain from abandoning everything, while fixing problems that were...annoying (see the alternate blue square logo for small-space digital use, for example). I'm not a fan of the more aggressively cropped 'C' but that's more a nuisance feeling than anything objectionable. Overall, I'd say Pentagram's AMEX work is interesting more for their restraint and ability to recognize when it's not appropriate to just abandon everything.

The surreal thing is that, as important as continuity and timelessness can be for financial services firms, it's even more fundamental to the LOC's roles. If you've ever been to the Thomas Jefferson Building, to walk its halls the first time is to almost be overwhelmed by a sense of connection to millennia of human thought and achievement. There are libraries out there with modern-looking identities (as an example, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh--though I really hate the combined i/l mark).[0] I don't know of any that are as in-your-face as the LOC redesign. A lot of these kinds of "make it modern" updates are because companies are trying to better connect with consumers. The really crazy part about this is just how irrelevant that is to the Library of Congress' mission. The LOC isn't trying to reinvent itself before the internet kills it, as with so many other libraries across the country.

It's really hard to imagine someone actually visiting, well, any of the LOC buildings and coming away with the impression that Druk Condensed feels right. Pentagram has an impressive body of work, but their work for the Library of Congress comes across as the sort of pitch an intern might make prior to being fired before they might accidentally stumble in front of a client.

0. http://www.landesbergdesign.com/projects/carnegielibrary.sht...

I can see pretty clearly where the logo design has come from: if you scroll down to the "Stationary"/"LCM Magazine"/"Posters" examples it's clear that they started with print layouts and worked backward to find a logo that would fit within their plans for those print layouts.

The problem is (a) the print layout, while nice, is neither innovative, nor suitable to the brief (it's a carbon copy of every cultural/avant garde/art magazine I've seen recently) and (b) it's very restrictively print-oriented. The iPhone X screens look like lazy afterthoughts.

It's not just you. The entire design world thinks this is misguided garbage.

I'm having a hard time understanding why the Library of Congress was paying Pentagram for a new identity in the first place. Smells like someone playing "corporate brand executive" with taxpayer money. It's not like the Library of Congress has to steal marketshare from tech companies or something.

hah the second i opened the page i thought the new one was on the left... then read the description and felt quite let down

My gut reaction is that this new logo is strictly worse than the old one. This is my first time seeing either of the logos.

Can someone with a graphic arts background explain why the LoC is so attracted to this new design (after only 8 years with the previous one)?

Heh. Rebrandings are often more valuable for the fact of rebranding (press hit for LoC!) than any aesthetic reason. It's rare to find an administrator with any graphic sense.

The current librarian (confirmed in 2016) is a bit of a new broom, and is the first to serve under a term-limit. Previous librarians served for life, and the last one refused to understand computers.

Carla Hayden is the first Librarian of Congress to be an actual professional librarian in decades.

They traded what was "just a logo" for an entire design system. This is the branding equivalent of Google’s “Material Design.” Also for what it’s worth Pentagram — and Paula Scher — are very prestigious, considered top-of-their-field.

But I agree they phoned this in. Unnecessary and uninspired.

Ah, so it's a much more expensive bad logo.

I wonder why they couldn't make a design system that integrated or utilized the previous logo, or an updated version of it.

The new one is hideous and redundant, as are all of the alternatives (which look more like positioning/alignment errors in Microsoft Word).

1. "LIBRARY Library" -- really?

2. The colors don't evoke a library OR Congress, but a construction site.

3. There's no "logo" here, strictly speaking: just a bunch of words.

The article even explicitly says "Our view here at the Library of Congress is the image of a treasure chest, filled with limitless information and services, ready to explore and amaze if you open it up."

There's absolutely nothing in this new logo that communicates "the image of a treasure chest" filled with anything at all.

Similarly, the "bookshelf" examples look less like a bookshelf and more like someone having issues putting clip art into text in Word.

I really hope feedback about this logo influences all involved parties to reconsider this design.

Despite their prestige, Pentagram's work is very hit or miss, often erring on the side of minimalism to the point where it sucks any soul or character out of the brand

It's part of a push to help people recognize that the LoC is for them, not for congress.

Because when you pay an extreme amount of money for something, you are automatically biased towards liking it.

I don't think the library of congress should have an aggressive, in-your-face logo. It's a library. It's mission statement is about maintaining history. There's no reason to try to appeal to hip coffee shop urbanites. The old logo was both more clever (resembling the American flag and a book at the same time), and still pretty darned modern. Designing a new, tone-deaf logo is a waste of everyone's time and resources.

Libraries are quiet. An all-caps logo is the branding equivalent of yelling.

Gah, that's awful. It looks more like the branding for a protein bar: "New EXTREME library to the maaaaax! Get some!!"

It is kind of amazing how inappropriate a slab typeface feels for a library.

Libraries are serving their communities all sorts of media beyond just books.

Just nitpicking it is not slab typeface. It is good old sans-serif

The old logo has an authoritative look without feeling dated. It looks great on a website, in print or on a sign. The new logo is meaningless and bland and has massive scaling issues. Interesting direction, I'll admit.

This must be a joke, right? Using the word “library” twice in the new logo looks ridiculous. As do the variations where “library” is split in two.

For some reason it wanted me to think "LIBERAL ARMY".

interesting tidbit from the comments there; this design firm, Pentagram, also did the recent redesign for EFF: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/07/effs-new-logo-member-s...

Looks very similar, and while I strongly dislike the Library of Congress redesign, it almost works for EFF.

The "fight the power" aesthetic of late-1980s/early 1990s zines feels at home with EFF's history and mission statement. The Library of Congress is the power.

It is the same logo. Big heavy sans-serif font with the full name of the org stuck in the middle. The only difference is EFF's big EFF letters are stretched and the full title is condensed, while LIBRARY LIBRARY's big LIBRARY is condensed and the full title is normal-width.

So it is not the same logo...

It makes more sense for the EFF, though, since both “EFF” and “Electronic Frontier Foundation” are valid names for the organization. The LoC’s version creates the impression that the brand name is just “Library”.

Pentagram has done rebrands for many organizations, and they all fit the same theme. Enough so that when an organization hires Pentagram to do a rebrand, they must obviously be looking for a "pentagram logo" like this.

I don't like the logo, but let's take into account that this is supposed to be a identity system and they are designing a logo that is extremely flexible in service of such system.

The identity in this case will not come just from the logo or the colors or a rigid manual that says what pantone codes to use and how many `x` should be around the logo (where x is the dot of the i or whatever) which everybody will ignore anyway. This identity seems to be designed to be misuse-proof.

We're used to the logo being the centerpiece of an identity system but this "flexible identity" trend has the order of priorities backwards.

I think that it's leading with its weakest aspect, which is the logo with nothing but LIBRARY. It's much more interesting when there is an actual goal, like identifying an event or department and then putting a little Library of Congress logo next to it.

Standalone comparison of Old Logo vs New Logo, i think most agree that Old Logo wins hands down. Old Brand Identity vs New Brand Identity is where the new one makes a lot more sense.

I actually like the concept of inserting the images in between the "LIBRARY" bookends. I agree that the narrow slab san-serif typeface is mildly inappropriate for a library, but it's passable assuming the intent is for the brand to feel bolder and more modern. My biggest complaint is the omission of a logomark. The old logomark was boring and uninspired, and I think Pentagram not doing a logomark was a huge missed opportunity. They had the chance to create a truly iconic logomark for an iconic institution, and instead said "Eh, logotype is enough." It is definitely not enough.

My initial reaction to the logos was, wow that really doesn't look good, but the video helped sell it.

I found the change.... disappointing.

I'll gladly concede that there could be a better logo than what previously existed, but this isn't it.

When I look at the old logo, I think "professional and clever". When I look at the new, I think "WE'RE SHOUTING IN A LIBRARY! A LIBRARY LIBRARY!"

If this places me in among the unwashed masses that "just don't get it", so be it. I see regression, not improvement here.

The redesign looks fine. Most people, seeing the log, will never have visited a Library as they fade into obscurity beyond obsolescence. It's good to get ahead and set up the idea that it is THE Library.

Until books currently under copyright become readable for free online (i.e. never), libraries - even in their original form and with their original purpose - will still be useful for a unique purpose that can't be achieved in other ways.

Libraries are far from fading into obscurity.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/21/millennials-...

A lot of branding I hated when I first saw it has grown on me over time, this one though - I know it sounds like a joke but I find it hard to read.

I love this redesign.

LIBRARY is set to become my new favourite candy bar.

Why are they screaming at me? Can we keep the signage and ditch the new logo? Was this solving an actual issue?

Why do they want to change it? What purpose does the change serve? Or indeed, who is it who wants to change it?

I’m not a designer, but the new logo looks meh.

Best of luck to the LIBRARY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS on their new logo.

It's even worse in the examples where they jam an image in the middle of the word LIBRARY. Welcome to the LIBR <jpg> ARY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS! Dear God.

I wonder how much this design costed taxpayers.

Purveyors of the finest in LIBRARY since 1800.

If they would just delete the second "library" and resist the temptation to put images inside of words it'd be alright I think.

but that's part of the justification, at least according to the exhaustive review -- just like our own shelves, we put things in between books.

Blech.

Paula Scher, you can't win them all.

I think it must be hard to be on top of style and design so long. Pentagram work has been just meh past couple of years. In sciences people seem to be more respected and wise. In design and fashion they just get out of touch.

Literally her own words (over 7 years ago): https://vimeo.com/hillmancurtis/artist-series-paulascher#t=1...

“If I don’t get it in the first crack, I get it in the second. And if I don’t get it in the second I almost never get it.”

"I’ve never been a refiner"

This is not identity design—this is ego.

My initial reaction was shock and disgust.

My reaction after mulling it over for awhile and reviewing some of the material is.... contempt and disgust.

So there's that.

I definitely prefer the old logo. The new one is extremely generic and does not convey any feeling via the logo.

My biggest problem with the new logo is that they're effectively un-branding the Library of Congress by trying to brand it as LIBRARY.

That's like trying to rebrand the White House as HOUSE.

....and now I just had a horrifying thought.

This is another symptom of Idiocracy becoming a documentary?

Their concern is that too many people read "...of Congress" and assume it's not for them. They're very much pushing the idea that it's a library first.

Not sure I like how they did that, but I get the idea.

I always felt the old logo looked too postal. Like it was a franked stamp.

The new one is also not great. But I guess the directive was to maximize "library" and minimize associations with "congress."

In yet another bold move for America, President Trump mandates that all gov webdesign will be done via Fiverr Gigs...

My bad. I meant graphic design.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com