Comment by tonystubblebine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tonystubblebine | Hacker News Reader

tonystubblebine

I've been trying to evaluate this logo under the assumption that the people who are working at Yahoo are smarter than me and have more information than me.

My personal reaction is that I hate the bevel. Hate. I was rooting for #10, which is a simplified and modernized version of their old logo.

But. I'm not a Yahoo user. Period.

The bevel immediately made me think of some brands you'd find on sale at Macy's, which mainstream America associates with quality, but which my artisanal-y brainwashed brain thinks of as mass produced junk.

Imagine for a second that Yahoo has research showing normal people reacting to this logo with words like luxury and high-class.

If that's the case, then Yahoo just pulled an epic branding end run. Google, Apple, and Microsoft are fighting to be the flattest, plainest, more boring brands. Then Yahoo stepped up and said, "Yo. Let's be fabulous together!"

In the old days, Yahoo's skunkworks Brickhouse division had posters in their break room titled "Know your competition" with pictures of Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin. Trying to copy the other tech giants was (one of) Yahoo's problems because the Yahoo teams couldn't celebrate what they were actually doing well.

The contrarian in me salutes Yahoo for this crazy, out of left field, gaudy, off-trend logo. Genius.

I was rooting for #10 as well. The selected logo looks... cheap. When you can see the bevels they're distracting, but at typical resolutions (as on the home page) they get anti-aliased out leaving the edges of the letters looking fuzzy. You end up with an image that looks like it was improperly scaled.

I'm astounded they didn't hire an agency for this. Updating the logo for a major brand is incredibly specialized work and not something for which in-house talent is typically suited. They're too close to the brand to be objective and with an agency the power dynamic is better - they can fire the client if they're being dumb. I'm a fan of Marissa, but she should leave font and logo design to the pros.

Being Dutch, I associate the bevel with "American bad taste". Design is sacred here, logo design doubly so. This would be ridiculed.

Since when are bevels an American phenomenon? You know that bevel is a French word, right?

The origin of a word has ZERO no relevance, how can it? May only French speaking countries be the places where the phenomenon of entrepreneurialism exists, with the phenomenon occurring only to smaller extents in other countries. Invention of a word does not give you the sole or even the greatest entitlement to its meaning.

Good question, where did the bevel originate? Who first beveled a 2D graphic?

I can find lots of designers claiming they're out of fashion, but I can't find anyone with a history of the bevel...

Can someone call Roman Mars?

American product logos typically employ more effects, like swirls, gradients, shadows, perspective, highlighting, etc. than European counterparts. My personal opinion is that they usually look better and more inviting. But not in the case of this logo. Holy hell does this logo suck in all sorts of ways.

The logo does not guarantee success or failure. Lots of huge companies have horrid logos...

> The bevel immediately made me think of some brands you'd find on sale at Macy's, which mainstream America associates with quality, but which my artisanal-y brainwashed brain thinks of as mass produced junk.

Sounds like Yahoo's market positioning to me.

About the bevel... I hate it too.

The only thing I can come up with is that someone, probably Mayer, thinks it's a hipster cool throwback to the late '90s when everyone was using Photoshop's default bevel and emboss filters like there was no tomorrow.

I feel like, if Meyer had been at this ten years ago, Yahoo would have just finished purchasing MySpace--Tumblr is just the modern-day equivalent. It's that kind of aesthetic, and that kind of audience, that they're reaching for here. (Meyer's own blog theme is a great example!)

For what it's worth, I like the bevel, because (probably due to the darkness of the colors involved) it somehow manages to be almost invisible at default zoom - if I just go to http://www.yahoo.com and look at the logo, even on a Retina display, it seems almost flat, with just a hint of varying color to spice it up. It's only when I look closely that the true depth is revealed. This adds visual interest... or I may just be blind. :)

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