Hasta La Ideas

In 2007, it was the London 2012 Olympics logo making everyone sick with anger (and epilepsy). 2008 saw the start of people being upset over how much money Pepsi had spent on their new look. Last year, it was minor anger over Ikea‘s switch from Futura to Verdana, and major anger over Tropicana‘s decision to update their brand (which they ultimately scrapped a few weeks later). 2010 was shaping up to not to have any rebranding to universally despise, but just two months shy of leaving us completely free of outrage. Fortunately, Gap stepped in just in time and got the job done. By now, you’ve possibly seen their new Helvetica-based, little square box revision and decided how it makes you feel. There’s loads of talk all over nearly every design blog, so it would be difficult to miss. Brand New‘s Armin Vit said, “I’m not one to critique something by saying it looks as if it were done in Microsoft Word but this one is just too unsophisticated to warrant anything more than that.” And that’s one of his nicer comments. There’s already a Twitter feed from the new logo, largely filled with sad commentary. Even better, Scott Hansen has moved in on the controversy by launching a “Gap Redesign Contest” asking readers to redesign the newly redesigned and give the company something everyone won’t hate with a passion. As of this post, he’s received 167 entries. Given the amount of negativity out there after just a day of having the new logo in public, it’ll be interesting to see if the company sticks with it or backs down right away. Also a good hypothetical exercise to wonder if Gap would have made this move had its founder and board member Donald Fisher not passed away last year.

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