For the Public, Yahoo’s New Logo Disappoints
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (Courtesy Fortune Live Media)
Yesterday Yahoo unveiled its new logo after great fanfare—and after releasing a new test logo each day for 30 days. Having watched Yahoo’s video and read Marissa Mayer’s blog post about the final logo selection, I can see that this identity evolution for Yahoo clearly had more importance internally than it did externally. And that is right. It was critical that Ms. Mayer recognize that change was necessary, that she assume leadership of the change, and that she involve the internal staff at the level that she did. That alone made it a worthwhile exercise.
The external announcement of the change, however, comes across as a “so what.” The new wordmark does very little to tell a new story about the organization. It has the same color and same whimsical characteristics, but with a bit more of the “mathematical consistency” that Ms. Mayer refers to in her post. While 30 days of various logos leading up to this point was somewhat entertaining, it provided little consumer benefit. This final reveal was rather anticlimactic.
Combined with Ms. Mayer’s treatise to the process, it seems overblown, self-referential, and of little value to Yahoo’s loyal audiences (of which I am one).
What do you think?
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