In the seemingly endless procession of brand do-overs, 7up has announced a new logo. The fruity new 7up design will adorn cans outside the US market (7up is owned State-side by the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group but owned globally by PepsiCo. It is the PepsiCo version that will feature the new logo design). I like it.

Hat tip: Creative Review

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Fresh on the heels of the new Gap logo fiasco, clothing retailer Urban Outfitters unveils their new logo as well. Whether it’s a ‘me-too’ prank trying to mimic the earlier freak-out is anyone’s guess

Visitors to the Urban Outfitters official website are currently being greeted by the odd logo featured on top. It’s a weird bird indeed – strange font selection, inexplicably arced lettering, and half of the logo, well, missing. Is this a serious rebranding effort, or someone taking the piss after last month’s Gap logo internet freakout, attempting to capitalize in the additional traffic such stuff tends to get? Ya got me. The new logo seems to track back to Horrible Logos, a take-the-mickey site that promises, for a one-time payment of five bucks in “beer money”, to design a logo that “you hate, just as much as I hated designing it”.

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Gap unveils their new logo to an internet firestorm, Twitter battles between the new and old and a lot of griping amongst the design community. Take our poll after the jump.

Visitors to the Gap website this morning were greeted by a new logo (above right) and critics were quick to jump on the new design. Replacing the retail chain’s famous blue box, which enclosed all upper-case “Gap” typography in a condensed serif is a graduated blend blue box slid under a bold sans serif font. The change isn’t universal, and the original logo remains on all Gap stores (as far as I know anyway).

The Gap chain is made up of over 1,200 stores in North America, 300 in Europe and in various parts of Asia. Interbrand values the Gap brand at almost $4 billion, the 84th most-valuable brand in the world. The internet reaction to the new logo was rapid – critics have spent most of the day bagging the new logo, and a poll in a feature about the switch on the Huffington Post was almost 80% negative at time of writing. “Gap logo” is also the 69th most popular search phrase on Google.

Two related, and dueling, Twitter accounts have shown up in the past few hours – @gaplogo and @oldgaplogo – though whether the accounts are official, or parody, is anyone’s guess. There’s still some question about whether the change is permanent or not. The new logo was rolled out on the hush-hush – no official press releases issued and media calls for comment have not been returned. So waddya think – an improvement or not (poll below)?

I’m leaning heavily towards not.

Update:

According to a new post on the Gap Facebook page:

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.

Accordingly, I’ve added another choice to our poll below.

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A couple of weeks ago, The Chicago Museum of Science & Industry rolled out their new logo to mixed reactions (though if you read the comments on this article, the reaction’s none-too-mixed). Gone are the trademark bars with overlaid boxes, crowbarred into the design for the words ‘THE’ and ‘OF’ (trust me, doing that’s always a pain). In their place is a geometric linear treatment consisting of the museum’s acronym, wrestled into a 3D-ish icon. The old serif font’s been tossed too, replaced with type reminiscent of the Bauhaus school of thought. S’okay I guess. While it’s certainly an improvement over the old design, that’s not saying much, and from where I sit, the new design logo is a little too sterile for such a fun, wondrous and interactive environment. I was lucky enough to visit the museum several years ago when in Chi-Town for a conference with the Mrs (and will be able to go again next month under similar circumstances). The place is absolutely amazing, and demands a few days visit just to take it all in. As my time was limited, I had to rush through the last bits and pieces, so I’m looking forward to going again with a little more time set aside.

Planes, trains and other cool stuff

What needs to be said about a museum that has an honest-to-goodness-real-size 727 (United‘s first) hanging from the ceiling? If you’re an HO scale model train geek (guilty as charged) you’ll be equally blown away by the 3,500 square feet display The Story of Trains that sits underneath (Photograph: Interiority) That impressive setup includes 192 custom models of exquisitely detailed buildings and landmarks, nestled amongst some of the coolest model trains and accessories you’re ever likely to see. And…

New modern logo ignores heritage technology?

Sorry, forgot myself for a moment, but that’s the point of the museum I would think. And the new logo, while technically proficient from a design point-of-view, fails to capture any of that Willy Wonka, Alice in Wonderland vibe that’ll turn even the most cynical (guilty as charged) into a small child once inside the giant bronze doors. The new logo ignores the heritage of the museum (been around since 1933 – see here for more of the museum’s history and landmark exhibits) and seems to reflect more of the modern day silicon chip industry rather than the gears, cogs and grease of much of the historical technology on display. If ever a logo cried out for a bloody rocket ship treatment, this design might be it. Not that the logo is completely disassociated with the museum – the upright columns in the ‘W’ are supposed to represent the columns of the building (similarities to the old Enron logo have been noted). The new logo was designed by FutureBrand of New York, leading some to gripe that there were many Chicago-based agencies more than up to the task, and that the budget for the work might have been better spent locally.

Logo introduced during Winter Olympics’ TV spots

In any case, the new logo is but part of a “massive rebranding campaign” that saw the new logo unveiled in TV spots (below) booked during the 2010 Winter Olympics, and a $205 million dollar, multi-year facelift called Science Rediscovered that began in 2008.

The ‘meh’ factor notwithstanding, it’ll be interesting to see how the new brand design pans out (the museum has already ported the new logo onto their website with a nifty transformation animation). Maybe I’ll post a first-hand update from the museum in a few weeks.

If I’m not too busy playing with the trains that is.

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Another major corporate rebrand announced – this time it’s Capital One, who are practically giddy over their new logo. Nasty. This kind of swoosh logo may have been all internetty and forward-thinking circa 1999, but at the beginning of 2008, this certainly qualifies for the ‘WTF Were They Thinking?” department. This new design is forty miles of rough design road and dated before it’s official roll-out late Feb. Internally, the new logo is referred to as the boomerang, and was selected by the CEO from a wide range of choices. Looks like a design that could have been peeled of any one of those $50 logo template sites and missed this particular design trend by oh, eight or nine years. We get it folks – you have a web site. The bastard son of a Nike logo doesn’t make that point any clearer.

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Xerox recently announced that they were changing their corporate logo, dropping the famous ‘X’ icon for the swishy, chromy, X-boxy design seen here. Richard Wergan, vice president of advertising, calls the new design “a brand identity that reflects the Xerox of today.” I don’t mind it, especially when you find out that the new mark was developed with animation in mind, and is an attempt to connect all the various bits and pieces of the giant corporation together. Xerox are no longer just in the copier business, and hope the new brand establishes that. Interbrand, the advertising agency arm of Omnicom Group, spent more than 18 months interviewing some 5,000 people about their attachments with the Xerox name. The new mark was designed to retain the positive aspect Xerox stands for (dependability and stability), while tossing the not-so-positive (formal, somewhat old-school). Most important aspect of the new design was that is scream modern, innovative and flexible. Is the new logo successful? I think so – though only time, and consumer acceptance, will really tell.

Design community reviews have been less kind – likening it to the Microsoft X-Box logo, referring to Xerox as a very, shiny, shiny company, and even complaining that the design is a rip from the new Kyrgyz Republic flag, albeit with a twist (no, I haven’t a clue where it is either). All boils down to can’t please all the people, all the time, I guess. Though I wonder how long before our InstaLogo pals try to sell this one (sorry, couldn’t help myself).

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I’m generally loathe to dole out unsolicited critiques of other logos (especially when they’re not so kind) – I have no way of knowing the background design process, how much ‘tinkering’ the well-intentioned client performed, etc. Having said that, there are the odd times when I’m willing to make an exception, and the old (but still currently in use) logo for The Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce is one of them. While I guess if M. C. Escher was alive today, this is something he might come up with, the rubick cube-esque design is a classic example of what happens when somebody tries to be too clever by half, and in doing so forgets the actual mission – designing a logo that reflects the company involved. Particularly when we’re talking about financial logos. And while I certainly appreciate the graphic gymnastics that create the optical illusion of the mark, there’s so much wrong with this piece as a logo that it almost defies description. It’s certainly not an effective depiction of a user-friendly chamber of commerce. More like a design for a sci-fi movie, The Chamber, where hapless victims are trapped in an ever changing maze of geometric shapes. Come to think of it, this design would have been perfect as a poster for the indie move The Cube – a flick that closely parallels the plot I’ve just outlined. Even members were confused – “They think it’s a Rubik’s Cube or a complicated chamber of secrets that you can’t get in or get out. They didn’t get it,” said Shannon McNett-Silcox, The Chamber’s vice president of member relations.” Thankfully, the logo has been reworked with the new mark, created by Fort Wayne-based Brand Innovation Group and unveiled last Thursday, is supposed to “incorporate four pillars, which represent the Chamber’s primary efforts: government and community affairs, air service development, workforce/ business development and membership development”. The new logo isn’t great, but a vast improvement over the existing one. Probably why it was greeted with “cheers of appreciation”. Hat tip to the Journal Gazette.

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Toy store chain giant, Toys R Us, has began to roll out their new logo makeover to mostly positive reviews from design blogs and forums. While I’m certainly not an advocate of changing a logo simply for giggles, overall I like the reworking of the mark. The backwards ‘R’ is still there (thankfully) but it’s been enlarged with the old star motif added to the letter rather than the color field featured in the old style. The font work has been tightened up, while retaining most of the old character, and the colors have been ‘nuanced’ to a more natural palette. If I was looking at the bottom line, as opposed to the design itself, I might be convinced to question if the enormous expense of the re-brand justifies the rather subtle re-tooling. But then again, I’m not a suit, so I won’t. Never one to miss a blatant plug opportunity, I’d also like to point out that we’ve developed a lot of toy store & company logos over the years…

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Italian car group Lancia relaunches its visual identity this week to mark the company’s centenary. The new-look badge has been drawn by Italian design consultancy Robilant Associati. The agency collaborated with the group’s in-house team at Lancia’s design centre in Turin to update the corporate logo, which comes ahead of the brand’s return to the UK next year.

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Ice cream parlour giant Baskin – Robbins lend their name to the increasingly long list of corporations that have thrown their logo into the redux ring. Alas, I’d argue that the new logo is not an improvement. The old B & R ice cream logo (apparently still used as a secondary logo) had a certain ‘heritage’ to it – reminiscent of ice cream parlors in Norman Rockwell paintings. It also incorporated the famous 31 flavors – a pivotal piece of the company’s brand – very prominently into the mix (the theory behind the 31 is one flavor for every day of the month). The new logo (known inside the corp as the ‘fun logo’) is a little higgeldy piggeldy (a technical term) and has a rather ‘childish’ theme with ‘pointy’ font work and a noticeably downplayed ’31 flavors’ motif (squint – it makes up the B & R in the center.

Yeah – it’s clever. But effective? Nuh uh). Perhaps appealing to kids (and subsequently families) was the point, though I’d argue that the conservative older version appeals to families just fine. Now, whether this has anything to do with Baskin-Robbins (along with Dunkin’ Donuts) purchase by defence and aerospace giant The Carlyle Group is anyones’ guess…

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