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Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

tomc1985

It is absolutely disgusting how much gets done in this world simply because someone needed to stroke their ego. Legacies, bonuses... pah. Pathetic how predictably selfish we humans really are.

What really strikes me is the lack of customer centricity in all this. Do they want the change? Do they think the existing look is outdated? Do they like the old look? Pah. Who cares! I have a legacy to cement and a bonus to secure!

(Besides the usual MBA word-vomit mumbo jumbo like 'modern utility', but we all know those are just made up excuses)

Maybe a brand should just be... a brand. A brand isn't your friend, it isn't human, it isn't alive, and it most certainly only exists to take your money and put it in their account -- and, in tech, more often than not through some rent-seeking subscription model because nobody likes us actually owning anything anymore.

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It isn't just the logos that change the same companies have diversity officers as if this will change the tast of the orange juice. As is customary I have to add I am a black male least I am accused of being insensitive.

> As is customary I have to add I am a black male least I am accused of being insensitive.

It's good you clarified that, because I know black males are never insensitive.

I tease. But I do see the value of being mindful of cultural differences in companies that employ a diverse workforce. No, it has nothing to do with the taste of the orange juice, but understanding where your colleagues are coming from is still productive. The typical employee probably is unaware of cultural differences that might come up with colleagues from cultures they're unfamiliar with. I'm thinking mainly here of cultures that have different values or practices from the dominant culture in the company, like a devout Muslim or Orthodox Jew working for a secular American company.

Though, yes, people who build their career on diversity tend to go a bit further than just preventing stuff getting lost in translation across cultural divides, probably for similar reasons to why brands can't just be left alone.

Not only am I a black male I also live and work in Africa. That might explain my dig at diversity because we are mostly black people also changing logos for seemingly silly reasons.

Are you African or a black man from the US/Europe who now lives and works in africa?

Diversity isn’t about the color of one’s skin, it’s about what that means when embedded in Western society.

Cynical Geezer Take: It is very consumer-centric. Brand A's management is loudly signaling that Things Have Changed, at what was a familiar & perhaps favored company. So I need to be alert for price hikes, product shrinks, quality & service downgrades, etc., etc. Or, if there is a Brand B that I like almost as well - then this is probably a great time to switch to it. Unless Brand A's product was extremely fungible & competitive (say, gasoline), then switching to B before A's sh*t hits the fan will involve a lot less time & grief than sticking around after A has served notice.

Imho when a company gets penalized by watchdogs, it should also affect the logo, so customers can see that something happened. E.g. a watchdog could take a bite out of a logo or place an ugly watchdog symbol next to it.

This technique would probably still work: https://i.imgur.com/GMpoCh9.jpg

Except the watchdog gets to change your logo, not you.

Like an abatement in heraldry!

It is confusing to me: a brand at its very core is ego and legacy. That ego and legacy happen to be shared among a whole company, but it’s 100% a “we vs the others”, and the history behind the identity.

What you seem to be looking for is not a brand but a label or a certification perhaps ?

Feeling, maybe, but only because it is intentionally cultivated to be so. Large shifts in company branding don't usual signal an equally large shift in the company's culture, though they might say otherwise.

If IKEA or Apple suddenly changed their aesthetic, they are probably going to be pushing out the same products... just with different packaging. The companies themselves remain the same as they were. People will have different feelings, depending on their reaction and how the branding people message this change, but ultimately the move is pointless as everything continues as before.

For an extreme example, look at the Blackwaters or Facebooks of the world.

I’d argue branding and company culture are independent only if branding is weak in the first place.

Apple has a very strong brand, and if tomorrow they switched their logo and brand image to a cursive Ford style blue one it would need a strong justification behind it, a ton of employees would see such a change in a very negative way, and possibility think long and hard about their career path going from there, as the management might have lost their way.

Or the other way: when “Apple Computers” became “Apple” it wasn’t some random surface level change, but a reflection of how the company had deeply changed focus compared to its earlier days.

Branding and culture are rarely decoupled, and if any of those are strong enough they’ll change in lockstep.

PS: on brand and logo “refreshes”, like Peugeot moving to more a stylized lion, while those are arguably cosmetic, there is the same philosophy applied to the worker pool with “new blood” introduced to the company and processes and manufacturing moving along. In a way, the same thing is happening below and above the surface.

Take macOS. It moved from "Mac OS X" over "OS X" to "macOS" which was (AFAICT) purely a "random" surface level change (especially with the "remove Mac only to reintroduce it later and remove the X instead" move), even though "Mac OS X" was a rather well established brand.

I can kinda understand the desire to simplify it to "macOS". Through the years it was

- System 1,2,3,4,5,6,7

- Mac OS 8

- Mac OS 9

- Mac OS X

And it remained at "X" for about 16 years, with sometimes substantial releases being distinguished just by a big cat name or a decimal point. Arguably the "X" part stopped being part of the versioning, and simply became part of the brand but it was definitely redundant and "mac oh-ess-ex" is at best a bit clunky to say.

It certainly wasn't necessary, but I can at least understand why they'd want to do it.

It’s technically pronounced OS “ten”.

Being version “10” for fifteen years is kinda stupid, though. It’s the same problem Linux had with being on version 2.6, seemingly forever.

Yeah it probably is, I'd be interested to see how many people use that pronunciation though

Mac OS X was a product line name among others, and product lines come and go. It’s also a brand, but nothing compared to a company brand.

I don’t think it was all that well established. For one thing, people didn’t know whether to say “X” or “10.”

macOS also aligns with capitalization of iOS, which is the more widespread brand.

"Mac OS X" is so well established that the official IRC channel won't change the name to "macOS" and instead uses #MacOSX as the channel name.

Perhaps not the best example. Apple is not just a brand, it also has a near religious following. Apple could change their logo to a high resolution photo of an actual apple with 'Apple Computers' again as their main brand name, and a very vocal fanbase will praise them for their uniqueness, avant-garde thinking (different), and daringness. Others will follow, and in two years time KFC will have a logo with a high resolution photo of (a) Colonel Sanders and 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' below it.

It's probably inevitable. We've reached peak abbreviation and minimization anyway.

I'm not so sure. They wouldn't lose customers immediately but would annoy them.

Apple is defined by negative space. They are not complicated. They are not the same as everyone else. They are not spying on you(Or so some claim).

All the apple fans I know talk about simplicity and privacy more than any specific feature, and a lot of them appreciate simple things in all areas of life.

Changing the logo might really mess with the sense of simple quality.

IKEA already did, they changed their corporate font from IKEA sans to Verdana in 2009 (you can Google for "verdanagate"), and more recently to Noto (last year I believe).

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