New brand
redhat.com
redhat.com
Just stare at it for a second, especially the Re-d coupling. It's unkerned. The 'e' is about to topple over to the right, 'd' looks pregnant, 'a' is too top heavy. There's no visual balance, rhythm or consistency to how "Red Hat" looks. It basically looks as an amateur job.
http://videos.cdn.redhat.com/NEXT/new-brand/Logo-RedHat-A-Co...
I think fonts are pretty neat in a "hey we can make things that look fairly different but are still perfectly recognizable as the same concept" way, like the different styles of house icons which all meant "go home" in HyperCard stacks.
I confess don't understand the extreme nit-picking about one line being slightly too far over. Or trying to explain alleged issues through strained metaphors. Yes, this lower-case "d" looks like it has a belly -- that is the shape of that letter! They all do.
They've got an entire operating system, and it's full of bugs -- as they all are -- and it has obvious and measurable problems that hurt usability. I'm not sure why a minor branding change justifies a blog post on their part, and I really don't see why unkerned text is "a disaster". I'm typing this in a <textarea> which (like everyone's 1960's-emulating terminals and 1970's-styled editors) uses monospaced fonts, which by definition cannot be kerned.
Typography is a venerable craft, and the new wordmark has technical flaws that one simply wouldn't expect from a high-profile project. This won't have disastrous consequences of any kind, but within the context of discussing a post on the new logo, calling a part of the result disastrous is, IMHO, appropriate.
Some people are genuinely interested in branding and typography, some are simply irritated by change, therefore it's common practice to introduce new branding with a blog post. You can see from the amount of comments that there are quite a few people who care about this.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1015/
Good to see that new logos can also sometimes genuinely be a nice change!
Also people will spell Red Hat properly now (two words)
> We formed a task force to redesign it, bringing together people from different disciplines at Red Hat: graphic design, UX design, creative strategy, video, brand, product marketing, and more. And we worked with Paula Scher, a partner at design firm Pentagram, to help us focus. […] After 5 months of research, explorations, and brainstorming, the team found an elegant solution that still reflected Red Hat and could grow with us.
Pro bono or de Bono? Did these people express emotions and feelings and share fears, likes, dislikes, loves, and hates?
- https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/open-brand-project-what-probl...
A great example is GNOME adding a systemd requirement. The key developers are employed by Red Hat, and Red Hat chose systemd, so no consideration needs to be given to the possibility that a Linux distribution might not want systemd. This is how Debian was forced into systemd.
The projects very clearly do not give consideration to criticism. Choices are made by the Red Hat teams, and that is that.
Why did they pass up the opportunity to make it a more stylish kind of hat?
Personally I find the change crisp and modern, and the fact that it's a fedora is irrelevant. The company will definitely outlive the neckbeard fedora association.
Red Hat is a mature company selling enterprise software, so I kind of expect their logo to be what it is.
Edit: to put it another way, removing the face and putting in just the hat, puts more attention on the hat. And it looks more like it could be a trilby while the old hat was more of a classic fedora.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gevn4/i-bought-a-fedora-...
I now see that only one of their three previous logos (excluding wordmark changes) has been a trilby, which would seem to make migrating away from it easier. Given the modern 4chan association, I wonder has there been anyone internally at RH voicing such a suggestion.
Also... while the new one is definitely an improvement on the last, their pre-97 logos were great!
Overall, I think the color is a bit too bright for me. I liked the 1999 version... that's just my personal preference.
But it looks pretty good as favicon.
Compare to Slack’s logo rebrand: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18923719
...or to your skills.
As an aside, I feel strangely nervous to say I actually liked something on the internet. (I mention that because I got the same feeling after the GoT episode this weekend, which I really enjoyed). It seems that actually liking something (which is not the same as saying it has no flaws) just does not seem to fit with the modern internet vibe.
I like it, FWIW.