Yahoo!'s Logo Gets A Facelift After 18 Years
Yahoo!’s 18-year old brand is not just being reenergized by a a fresh face at the helm, but also by a new logo that’s more modern and sleek, moving away from it’s cowboy tooting, giant purple bubble look (yes, that’s my own analysis).
The new logo retains much of the old logo’s look, it’s still purple, still has an exclamation point at the end, but it’s lost weight; it’s slimmer and more refined. It looks like it just came back after a detox diet at a spa somewhere out West.
Created by Yahoo’s in-house brand design group and product designers, the new logo made its debut on the site’s homepage this morning, ending a thirty-day campaign leading to its official unveiling. It’s the first major redesign of the logo since 1995 and isn’t one of the runners up that Yahoo! teased over the past month.
“We wanted a logo that stayed true to our roots (whimsical, purple, with an exclamation point) yet embraced the evolution of our products,” the company said on Tumblr.
The design of a logo that is valued at more than $10 billion, did not come lightly, the company said on Tumblr. Yahoo! polled its employees to find out what they wanted and interestingly most said they preferred an uppercase logo in sans serif with a tilted exclamation point. Yahoo! complied and the exclamation point, if you noticed, is tilted by 9 degrees, “just to add a bit of whimsy.” The purple stayed the same purple, if you know anything about design that means Pantone Violet C.
As for what this means for the company, Yahoo! has been taking steps to revitalize its brand and products since Marissa Mayer took over as CEO in July of 2012. In May, Mayer led Yahoo to acquire Tumblr in a $1.1 billion acquisition and recently rolled out its new mobile web interface across many of its properties, including Mail, Finance, Homepage, Search, Messenger and News.
The changes have yet to translate into an increase in sales as Yahoo reported a fall in revenues in its latest quarter. However, the company’s stock has been agreeable to Mayer, almost doubling since she took over as CEO. Yahoo! also recently beat out Google in site visits for the first time since May 2011. Maybe this company makeover is working…
What do you think of Yahoo!’s new logo?