The change in logo for the search engine caused a firestorm of negativity online, but several companies have also come under similar analysis.
As we enter our Internet browsers, we sigh in relief and pleasure as we spot the Google logo on the screen. For years now, people who are plagued with unanswerable questions have been able to go to Google. Ahhhh, the reassuring comfort of that pleasurable logo.
Then on Sept. 1, 2015, everything changed. Google updated its logo from its old fashioned grandeur to a more modern, curvier and friendlier look. The backlash was immediate. Angry tweets filled up the Internet like distressed birds having full blown panic attacks. We may all miss the old Google logo, but is the new one really that reprehensible?
The new logo has been deemed childish and silly, like children’s alphabet magnets. Heck, even The New Yorker went on to say that the new logo “filed off [Google’s] dignity.” But in defense of Google, I now present to you some other logos even more undignified than the Google update.
First off, let’s look at the logo change for Gap. In 2010, Gap executives decided that the classic blue box was too stuffy and decided to hip-it-up a bit by shrinking the blue box and putting it on top of the “p” in “Gap.” That’s what “hip” is to Gap executives, apparently. The backlash was fast and furious, with online commentators ridiculing the new design with very unkind words like “joke,” “amateur” and “like a child designed it.” As such vicious backlash manifested, Gap moved quickly to stay in touch with its consumer base by posting a Facebook post thanking everyone for their input about the new logo. Gap then went on to say that the company thoroughly enjoyed watching everyone hate the logo, and asked haters to submit new possible designs, as if the logo change was just a beta that was being tested by a small group of people — namely, all of the Internet.
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But don’t think for one second that Gap is the only company with logo design woes.
Meet locum, a property management company situated in Sweden, whose logo is the word “locum” in all lowercase, with a small red heart taking the place of the “o.” Having not yet mastered my Swedish, I won’t pretend to know what locum means. Unfortunately, for the average gutter-minded English speaker, the logo essentially reads something humorously vulgar.
And, of course, there’s also the disaster that was the 2012 London Olympics logo. Yes, you know what I’m talking about, the one with the four pink shapes clustered together, within which are embedded “London” and the Olympic rings. Spending a whopping $800,000, the organizing committee decided that in order to be more hip and fresh (á la Gap), something drastic needed to be done. The “something drastic” was a sadistic geometry teacher’s dream: oddly jagged shapes spliced together like a jigsaw puzzle that was put together incorrectly. One critic said that the Olympic logo was swastika-like. Another quipped that the logo “resemble[d] a comic sex act between ‘The Simpsons’.” Even the Iranians got angry, calling the logo a blatantly obvious attempt to spread Zionism, which, of course, is the exact goal of the Olympics. I had to think about this one for a little bit, but if read vertically from left to right, the logo’s shapes resemble the letters “z,” “i,” “o,” and “n.”
Hate on the new Google logo if you must, but be thankful that at the very, very least, the Google logo isn’t as messed up as any of the ones mentioned above.
Richard Hwang is a student at Athens High School. What do you think of Google’s new logo? Email him at rhwang999@gmail.com.
