The Rolodex Logo Shock | Hacker News Reader

The Rolodex Logo Shock

imjustcreative.com

When a company's reason for being becomes irrelevant, first order of business is a rebrand. Logos are much more malleable than business plans.

I think the best such rebrand in recent history has to be AOL:

Old: http://nuzumcl.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/aol-logo.jpg

New: http://www.bizmology.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/AOL-L...

Look how strikingly bland and empty that new one is. It means nothing, says nothing, commands no lasting memory. The perfect representation of the world's largest, most soulless content farm.

Truly: perfect.

What's the purpose of the period supposed to be?

It is an indication that you need to stop.

As in "Thinking about AOL? Stop right there...".

I think you mean the colon.

No, he means the period in the 2nd AOL logo.

Actually, it's present in both of them.

Ah.

I don't have a source for this, but I read an article some time back that mentioned Rolodex in a long-ish list of other companies. The topic of the article was something along the lines of, "What do you do when your primary product becomes irrelevant?" Rolodex is a company founded on a product that is made obsolete by new technology. Their re-branding efforts extend beyond their logo. They've re-focused to offer more general office organizational and utility products as a means to survive.

Having said that, I like their old logo much better, even if doesn't represent their entire brand.

Tangent: I'm sure my comment regarding obsolescence will garner replies from people who will proclaim to prefer a Rolodex to a computerized address book or smartphone, but let's be straight about something. A computer address book whereby you key in the addresses and phone numbers of people you know is quickly becoming a thing of the past. With the growth of social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, those who opt-out will be the exception, not the norm. My 10 year-old cousin thinks it's odd that I spend so much time on the phone, and I think it's odd that my business partners spend even more time on the phone (I prefer text-based communication like SMS and Skype chat). What will my kids-kids use? The notion that we rely on explicit exchange of information to remain up-to-date will be foreign to them as well.

Well done with the preemptive strike on the "Well, actually..."'s you were about to get.

But yes, I agree, the old logo was superior. Since the product they are most famous for is obsolete, it makes sense that they would try to make themselves stand out in some other area. I just don't understand how leveraging the nostalgia and brand identity would be a bad thing. I mean, if your brand identity is associated with something distasteful or negative, sure, go for the complete re-brand. I'm pretty sure a rolodex is one of those cute anachronisms that people view in a positive light, though.

The more egregious logo change to my mind has to be UPS.

1961 logo = http://i.imgur.com/ZibIo.gif

2003 logo = http://i.imgur.com/fG9KT.jpg

I know, they went into logistics and such, but you can't ignore your heart and soul.

I will call your UPS logo and raise you a Xerox:

the timeless http://bit.ly/h7p2hX

vs. the new http://bit.ly/4YBIew

While we're at it, let's toss in MySpace:

the meh http://bit.ly/dWqJFi

vs. the WTF-worthy http://bit.ly/eRmxK1

Please don't shorten links on HN.

the timeless http://www.pronetworks.org/v21/images/uploads/blog_images/xe...

vs. the new http://www.electricsistahood.com/images/ever/new_xerox_logo....

While we're at it, let's toss in MySpace:

the meh http://www.subscribersrule.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/my...

vs. the WTF-worthy http://studiokandm.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/myspace_lo...

While I agree that URL shortening stinks for all sorts of philosophical and practical reasons, it grinds at me that HN's crippled markdown doesn't let you specify text for links. It makes it hard to integrate multiple links into text, because I am forced to line-break after each to achieve a minimum of readability.

You can see that the HN formatter is sympathetic to this type of textual disaster and "shortened" your links, just by omitting the last 20 or so characters of each.

I worked at Xerox when they did their rebranding. At a big company meeting I saw it and said, "seriously?"

Not only is it bland and generic, but my eyes keep thinking that the sphere is "off" somehow. Something about how they drew the lines on the X tricks my eyes and makes it look not-quite-spherical. Like they got the CEO's 15-year-old nephew to Photoshop a sphere.

We had a Ruby user group meeting at MySpace HQ here in LA after the redesign but before the troubles. The reception desk, the signs, everywhere I was confronted by their new logo. And I literally couldn't believe it.

My mind was blown and refused to believe this was their actual identity. So every time I saw it, I said to myself, "Really?!" I just had to visit their website again just now to make sure. This should not be anyone's reaction to a logo.

I still don't understand how such a mistake happened. "You know, we've seen lots of logos but we really love the one where you literally rip off the 'my' from the MyNetworkTV logo and put a sideways brace next to it. It makes us feel like crazy madmen that can do anything we want." I mean, that's my best-case scenario.

I like it better than the old one.

> So every time I saw it, I said to myself, "Really?!" I just had to visit their website again just now to make sure.

So for you, the logo worked. It got your attention and brought you into the site.

Myspace's new logo is perfect.

Empty, vacuous, without clear meaning.

Could not possibly summarize the company or product better.

The new Xerox logo sphere has the same problem as AT&T's new sphere logo. The perspective is off-center, so the poles are not aligned! Just looking at the AT&T logo makes me dizzy..

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/43/Att_svg....

Sometimes it feels good to work for IBM.

It's interesting that IBM has an animated logo on their current website that iterates through its past logos before settling in to the current one:

http://www.ibm.com/us/en/sandbox/ver2/ http://www.ibm.com/i/v17/t/ibm-logo-anim.gif

That's probably because it's IBM's 100th anniversary this year so it's running through the old logos as a retrospective.

IBM: proof that having a logo older than the Great Pyramids of Giza doesn't actually harm a solid business plan.

Personally, I prefer the new one. It oozes strength and confidence -- definitely two traits you want in a shipping company.

Ah, so it's not protection services, then?

I have been wincing looking at new logos for as long as I knew what a logo was and I've come up with two reasons why it's always so painful:

- the old logos were usually hand drawn and done by a very small creative team. More often than not this just makes them better

- any new logo today by a major company is usually being done by a rather large design firm and they are following a zeitgeist. Designers run in packs and themes are seasonal. That limp wristed font you see in the Rolodex logo is probably the same one you see in (_________).

So, in the case of Rolodex, it looks fairly commonplace and has a whif of groupthink added in. It's okay to throw up a little bit.

Looking at the new logo reminded me of Aperture Science [0][1]. I guess they hummed "We do what we must, because we can."

[0] http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091201202611/half-li...

[1] http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Aperture_Science

Fedex has really tainted me to always see an arrow between E and X. There's one on Rolodex's old logo, but it's a little bit different of a form. And I just can't take my eyes off it, damn it.

Fun read, interview with the guy who came up with that arrow: http://www.articlesandtexticles.co.uk/2006/09/02/the-fedex-l...

PS: The original article is apparently here: http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000273.php - I get some encoding errors, though.

This reeks of insider fear based-decision making. Within the walls of Rolodex headquarters, you figure (probably correctly) that a lot of today's young people don't know what an actual Rolodex looks like, and therefore that they won't understand what the little icon in the logo means. Besides that though, the company isn't even about those old Rolodex address index holders anyway! So much breadth and depth in today's Rolodex, who cares about the core product. Fear, and inside thinking like that end up getting you into "Rolodex: We're more than just the Rolodex!" territory, or worse, the land of "Rolodex: Forget the Rolodex!"

IANAM (I am not a marketer) but the history of a company, especially companies around long enough to have a history, is as important to me as their present when it comes to marketing and how they position themselves. Rebranding to try and move past your history is very frustrating to me as a customer when it's a negative history (eg Philip Morris renaming and refocusing a ton of itself over to the name "Altria") but it's just straight up baffling when its a positive history!

Rolodex made a product which filled a need so successfully that their brand name became a generic noun! And their solution to confidently presenting themselves in the modern world is to erase all record of that success from their branding?

I'd love to know why that is considered a good idea, where the thinking comes from, that genericizing is the solution to your specific success becoming outdated. Specifically for companies who have moved beyond the image in their logo representing a specific product to people.

If your problem as a company is that to MOST people your logo represents something arbitrary (for instance: a Rolodex file, or a tied parcel package in the case of UPS), why is the solution so frequently to start using a logo which represents arbitrary nothingness to ALL people?

If you're going to have a logo made of arbitrary swirly shapes and imagery which mean nothing, why not at least stick with some arbitrary swirly shapes which -- for some people who have been around for a while -- represent a specific past of innovation and cleverness? For the rest of their customers, at least with the old logo they have a clever story of the history of the company ready if asked. Instead, "Rolodex: We make nothing, we stand for nothing. How did we get here? We don't even know." Baffling to me.

Well stated. Or: someone still knows how our product became a common word, but we'd rather have them forget about it.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned The Gap's 2010 logo change (which lasted just one week):

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new-economy/2010/1012/New-...

Ran across this site today which looks to have some of the inspiration from the original Rolodex.

http://momentumdesignlab.com/themes/momentum/logo.png

It looks too much like the Samsonite luggage logo:

http://www.samsonite.com/home/images/samsonite_logo.gif

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