Gap’s New Logo: An Ugly Impact

This week, Gap quietly began rolling out a new logo: an odd blend of Helvetica typeface and a blue gradient box. Almost as quickly as the logo appeared on Gap.com, critics began slamming the new logo. The Consumerist comments, “the marketing geniuses at The Gap seem to have fiddled around with Photoshop for a few minutes and designed a new company logo that’s as bland and uninteresting as jeans and a black t-shirt. It’s not ugly, but it’s not memorable or creative, either. What were they thinking?” A fan on Gap’s Facebook page comments: “New logo lacks imagination-it’s as if I designed it!”

Gap surely realized there would be a backlash amongst brand loyalists. Let’s face it — getting rid of a 20 year old logo isn’t an easy thing to do. But is the logo ugly on purpose? Was it that Gap knew the new logo was so boring and run-of-the-mill that critics would immediately start talking about it and spur a renewed interest in the suffering brand?

Let’s face it, Gap has been doing some interesting promotions lately. On Groupon.com, Gap was the first retailer to launch a national promotion — one that resulted in the sale of 441,000 groupons and $11 million dollars in revenue. Then, last November, Gap turned a Vancouver store upside down — literally — overnight to promote its new loyalty program.

Most of the criticism of the new Gap logo has taken place on Twitter and Facebook — neither of which have been updated with the new logo. On Facebook, Gap responded to its more than 690,000 fans with a post stating: “Thanks for everyone’s input on the new logo! We’ve had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we’re changing. We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we’re asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we’d like to see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project.”

Despite the countless articles, Tweets and Facebook posts about the logo, my gut says this isn’t Gap’s the final resting place.

Click Through: Building Brands Online

This morning, as a part of National Design Week, the DC chapter of AIGA presented a workshop on Building Online Brands. The workshop, moderated by William Cosgrove of Threespot Media, is part of AIGA DC’s regular Salon series, which we have written about previously. In this workshop, Will took the group through two redesigns his firm worked on and talked about how a Website redesign is often an ideal time to evaluate who the organization is and where the organization wants to be.

In the case of Planned Parenthood, for example, after some soul searching, the organization realized that they needed to be more approachable to their younger constituents while not ostracizing their donors and supporters. With the help of Threespot, they created an updated version of the logo, selected a new color palette and chose stock photography that reflected the variety of races, ages and sexual orientations of the men and women they serve.

Before

After

For Brookings (formerly known as The Brookings Institute), redesigning their Website also meant renaming the organization. The tired logo was refreshed and a new tagline was introduced. For inspiration, Threespot worked with the organization to find existing print pieces they liked, and used those elements to inspire the new design.

Before

After

In addition to these two real-life redesigns, the group also discussed how the user experience is a critical aspect of a brand. Take, for example, Virgin America. Everything from the check-in to the cocktails served on the plane to the ticket purchasing experience is a reflection of Virgin America’s brand. Virgin is clean, fun, relaxed and fresh. Every touchpoint of their brand mimics these characteristics.

Dustin Curtis, a user interface designer, recently threw the proverbial “design grenade” at American Airlines after a poor experience attempting to book travel on their existing site. Curtis redesigned the AA site and sent it off to AA executives with a letter.

Sure, the redesign looks great. And Curtis makes some valid points in his email about the user experience. But does a redesigned Website mean that American Airlines will be able to compete with the user experience customers on Virgin America receive? NO. Absolutely, most certainly, NO. In fact, American Airlines current Website as cluttered and chaotic as it is, is far more reflective of the customer’s actual experience. American Airlines responded and they shared that their issue is an issue many organizations face:

“The group running AA.com consists of at least 200 people spread out amongst many different groups, including, for example, QA, product planning, business analysis, code development, site operations, project planning, and user experience. We have a lot of people touching the site, and a lot more with their own vested interests in how the site presents its content and functionality.”

Is hope lost for American Airlines and organizations facing similar issues? No. With some soul searching and a candid conversation with the Website stakeholders, American Airlines could begin to change the customers perception of their brand. And if they continue working as a team to make their touchpoints a consistent, calm, smooth experience, then American Airlines can change the perception of its brand.

Site Seeing: Twitter Backgrounds

Your Twitter page is an extension of your brand and should be designed with the same thought and consideration that goes in to any marketing initiative. In this site seeing column (others can be found here) we explore some uniquely creative Twitter backgrounds. As always, click the image to go to the site.

@miareeva

@spurrachel

@yahoo

@JayFerris

@Go_Media

@MrTweet

@sarahstanley

@kaleidoplex

From the Today Show: How Brand Saavy are Tweens?

This morning’s Today Show kicked off the first half of a two-day segment on tweens (children ages 8 to 12) and their brand savvy. Tweens account for $43 billion dollars in spending and as the Today Show’s focus group shows, tweens know their brands. Martin Lindstrom, chairman of Buyology Inc., points out the techniques marketers use to influence the tween audience.

Check out the video below to see how much branding influences tweens.

Tune in tomorrow to see how parents react the the Today Show’s focus group. In the meantime, test your brand saavy.