Meh-Hoo

Forget about who's been cast in the movie version of Fifty Shades Of Grey. Never mind that the U.S. is about to start World War III. The biggest news story of the day is Yahoo finally unveiled their brand new logo!

Here it is, in all its purple tinted glory! TA-DAH! 

And an apathetic and half-hearted "meh" was indifferently uttered across the land. 

It's OK, I suppose. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, it's just sort of... blah. It's doesn't have any zing, any pep. Your logo needs pep if you want it to excite people. Pep's definitely the way to go.

Now their old logo, it had pep! Look at it! It's positively lousy with pep. It's got pep oozing from every purple pore. It's mischievous, with just a hint of sass! Why they felt the need to swap it out with this new vanilla flavored one, I have no idea.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had this to say about the new logo: 

We knew we wanted a logo that reflected Yahoo — whimsical, yet sophisticated. Modern and fresh, with a nod to our history. Having a human touch, personal. Proud.

Now that's some impressive MarketSpeak™ there! "Whimsical, yet sophisticated." Important, yet trivial. Exciting, yet mundane. Well-designed, yet thrown together at the last minute.

This new logo is the culmination of Yahoo's staged "30 Days Of Change" publicity stunt, which I blogged about last month. For thirty whole days they debuted an allegedly new logo design that they had no intention of ever using in a flailing effort to drum up interest.

Most of these "designs" looked for all the world like they forced some lowly intern to type the word "yahoo" in each of the thirty fonts they had installed on their computer. If they spent more than one minute on any of them I'd be greatly surprised.

Despite the fact that the new official logo looks like they did the same thing-- simply select a font and type "yahoo"-- they insist that it's been handcrafted. Yeah.... to paraphrase Bart Simpson, "I'm not calling them liars, but... I can't think of a way to finish that sentence." 

It looks suspiciously like the Optima font to me, with a few minor variations.

But sadly Mayer contacted me for my opinion, so I guess we're stuck with this banal and vapid thing for a few months. Or until they get another new CEO, whichever comes first.