SAN FRANCISCO — CEO Marissa Mayer has given Yahoo's logo a
fashion makeover and her personal stamp reflecting the Internet
pioneer's new image under her leadership.
Yahoo at midnight flicked on a new company logo to refresh its marquee, a redesign that caps months of work to update Yahoo's major Internet properties.
The big news: The exclamation point stays(!) in an otherwise spare, clean treatment. Another twist: the exclamation mark occasionally darts and dances. The purple also stays.
"Marissa was an integral collaborator and force in the process," says Kathy Savitt, chief marketing officer at Yahoo.
That's putting it mildly, apparently.
In a post on Yahoo's recently acquired Tumblr site titled "Geeking Out on the Logo," Mayer describes the process.
"So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team: Bob Stohrer, Marc DeBartolomeis, Russ Khaydarov, and our intern Max Ma. We spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday designing the logo from start to finish, and we had a ton of fun weighing every minute detail. 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."
The geeky part kicks in with a "blueprint of what we did, calling out some of what was cool/mathematical."
Writes Mayer: "Our last move was to tilt the exclamation point by 9 degrees, just to add a bit of whimsy."
Mayer's touch has been widely seen across Yahoo since the former Google executive took the top spot and pushed for rapid-fire overhauls of its services. In recent months, Yahoo redesigned its Flickr, Weather, Sports, Mail, News and Search services. Mayer has also been on an acquisition spree of more than 20 companies.
Yahoo has been steeped in a turnaround in a bid to revive its business as competitors Google and Facebook gobble away at its advertising. Mayer has been a vocal advocate of a Yahoo strategy to boost its services for users. Last month, Yahoo's CEO took home some bragging rights by grabbing the crown for most U.S. Web traffic, passing her former employer Google.
Yet it remains to be seen how Mayer — whose status has elevated to glamour-geek icon in a recent Vogue spread
— can rejuvenate Yahoo's advertising business and return the company to
growth. Starting with its content is just a first step of window
dressing in a multiyear process to reverse Yahoo's fortunes.
"A brand logo can signal the direction for the company, but they also have to deliver on it," says Allen Adamson, managing director of branding firm Landor Associates. "The risk is that they are adjusting something cosmetically when they have a long list of strategic changes to make."
"People are hard to please. Half of the market usually either likes the old logo better or half feels the wrong winner was picked, he says. "It's a hard game to win. A lot of people will criticize them for what they do."
Over the past month, Yahoo teased users with different company logos running daily in advance of the makeover. The company had already come up with a new logo design and wasn't seeking crowd-sourced input to the design of the logo but rather wanted to see what kind of feedback it was getting externally as well as internally. Yahoo got the input of over 1,000 employees in the process, along with Mayer.
In step with Yahoo's marquee makeover, the company's exclamation point will become a changing animation. "That whimsy, that whit is very much a wink and a nod to the DNA that has very much been a legacy of the Yahoo brand," says Savitt.
Read more : http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/05/ceo-mayer-refashions-yahoos-iconic-marquee/2768199/
Yahoo at midnight flicked on a new company logo to refresh its marquee, a redesign that caps months of work to update Yahoo's major Internet properties.
The big news: The exclamation point stays(!) in an otherwise spare, clean treatment. Another twist: the exclamation mark occasionally darts and dances. The purple also stays.
"Marissa was an integral collaborator and force in the process," says Kathy Savitt, chief marketing officer at Yahoo.
That's putting it mildly, apparently.
In a post on Yahoo's recently acquired Tumblr site titled "Geeking Out on the Logo," Mayer describes the process.
"So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team: Bob Stohrer, Marc DeBartolomeis, Russ Khaydarov, and our intern Max Ma. We spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday designing the logo from start to finish, and we had a ton of fun weighing every minute detail. 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."
The geeky part kicks in with a "blueprint of what we did, calling out some of what was cool/mathematical."
Writes Mayer: "Our last move was to tilt the exclamation point by 9 degrees, just to add a bit of whimsy."
Mayer's touch has been widely seen across Yahoo since the former Google executive took the top spot and pushed for rapid-fire overhauls of its services. In recent months, Yahoo redesigned its Flickr, Weather, Sports, Mail, News and Search services. Mayer has also been on an acquisition spree of more than 20 companies.
Yahoo has been steeped in a turnaround in a bid to revive its business as competitors Google and Facebook gobble away at its advertising. Mayer has been a vocal advocate of a Yahoo strategy to boost its services for users. Last month, Yahoo's CEO took home some bragging rights by grabbing the crown for most U.S. Web traffic, passing her former employer Google.
"A brand logo can signal the direction for the company, but they also have to deliver on it," says Allen Adamson, managing director of branding firm Landor Associates. "The risk is that they are adjusting something cosmetically when they have a long list of strategic changes to make."
"People are hard to please. Half of the market usually either likes the old logo better or half feels the wrong winner was picked, he says. "It's a hard game to win. A lot of people will criticize them for what they do."
Over the past month, Yahoo teased users with different company logos running daily in advance of the makeover. The company had already come up with a new logo design and wasn't seeking crowd-sourced input to the design of the logo but rather wanted to see what kind of feedback it was getting externally as well as internally. Yahoo got the input of over 1,000 employees in the process, along with Mayer.
In step with Yahoo's marquee makeover, the company's exclamation point will become a changing animation. "That whimsy, that whit is very much a wink and a nod to the DNA that has very much been a legacy of the Yahoo brand," says Savitt.
Read more : http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/09/05/ceo-mayer-refashions-yahoos-iconic-marquee/2768199/
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