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Another Logo a No-Go: Goodbye to UC’s New Look

Posted December 14, 2012 by | 14 Comments

Change a logo at your peril!!!

Following an on online revolt against its new blue and gold stylized “UC” (discussed on this KCRW segment), university officials announced Friday that they are suspending further use of the offending logo, designed by an in-house team. “While I believe the design element in question would win wide acceptance over time, it also is important that we listen to and respect what has been a significant negative response by students, alumni and other members of our community,” Daniel M. Dooley, UC’s senior vice president for external relations, said in a statement Friday morning.

This echoes a similar revolt a couple years back when Gap was forced to step back from its (costly) identity change from conservative serif font to what was intended to be a hipper black, sans serif typeface with square as highlight rather than background. Again, people went wild; DnA was deluged with angry comments for simply discussing the topic on this this show .

These hasty retreats by institutions trying to be “modern” do raise some interesting questions: Would such designs “win wide acceptance over time,” as UC’s Dooley suggests, and does fear of the online flashmob kill new ideas too soon? Or were these logos simply bad designs that should never have been introduced? Why do logos exert such an emotional hold? Let us know your thoughts.

 

 

 

 

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  • http://www.legendrerutter.com Lance Rutter

    The Gap logo deserved all of the criticism it received as a terrible design. The legacy of the old identity and folks' emotional ties to it meant little in the context of such a terrible design mistake. There was nothing "contemporary" about using a typeface born in the 50s and overused ever since. Stark, heavy-handed, insensitive… most designers thought the publishing of this new "design" was a hoax, created simply to get people talking about a fading brand and how great the "old days" were.

    The problem with the new UC identity was not as much about form, and I think there's some truth in thinking that people would eventually embrace it, especially once it was implemented in a variety of communication and signage applications. There simply seems to be too wide a formal gap between old and new. There's nothing at all special or identifiable/ownable in the old identity. Curious that so many people had a strong emotional attachment to it. If this was a new school (i.e. Est. 2012), I think it would have been fairly lauded.

    • Frances Anderton

      Thanks Lance, very interesting points.

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