Waterstone's whips out its pendulous dugs
Bookseller Waterstone's has decided that its brand frontage paradigm needed a bit of a 21st-century makeover, and has managed to come up with a happening, mamtastic alternative to its dusty old logo. The Waterstone's logo, before and after Yes indeedy, after paying an unspecified amount of hard cash to whalesong and joss-stick …
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First Thought
For some reason my first thought was a pair of droopy balls.
At least they're reducing, reusing, recycling
That W looks familiar... http://www.venturethree.com/#/home/80
Paris, because she's good at recognising things upside down
The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.
Nice catch!
Waterstone's aka HMV
Now that Waterstone's are part of HMV, it was probably an easy-win marketing exercise to click "Layer > Rotate > 180" and be done.
What the hell was wrong with the old logo?
It was classy, dignified and despite just being a single letter, was instantly recognisable. When the revolution comes, assuming it doesn't end in a hung revolution, I suggest Venture Three is first against the wall and we auction off places on the firing squad.
The rise of W
Perhaps the old logo was getting overshadowed by Wikipedia's use of a serifed "W"?
Durn whipper-snappers.
Why...
...does everyone have to go lower case? Surely it won't be long before this starts to look incredibly dated. Then the logo-changers will have to wring more money out of their clients for the next fashion. I wonder what it'll be... all capitals perhaps? A punctuation fetish? Dicks.
dated?
... proposal to the effect that lower case / sans serif are "modern" date back almost a hundred years. Actually, so do a load of other "modern" things like steel & glass buildings, minimalism, etc. As typified by e.g. Bauhaus and all that lot.
Why?
I strongly suspect sir that you've answered your own question.
In the name of progress
The old logo was no good because it used the style of font you used to see in... what were they called...? Oh yes, "books".
Yeah ....
The next step is to switch all corporate logos to Comics Sans ...
I'll tell you what it says to me.
Dumbing down. In spades.
You have the move from a serifed, upper case "W" (with its attendant feelings of quality and stateliness) to a sans-serif lower case version (which says "footballer's jersey"* to me). Likewise the move from the name to the url loses the capitalisation of the proper name and the apostrophe (horrors).
Still, it makes sense. It's an accurate reflection of the continuing drive toward the mass market at the expense of quality at the once brilliant Waterstone's. Very sad.
*Anyone know why international football teams have gone for all lower-case names on the back? It looks completely crap IMHO.
Not that I'm a fan...
but "dumbing down"? No. An attempt a promoting a less austere and elitist facade is what I imagine the motivation behind this effor to be. Bad design decision? YES!!! Awful 'design'. Truly woeful. Still, it could have been worse. They could have used the hackneyed sketch font that is doing the web 2.0 rounds at the moment. What is wrong with Helvetica? Or if you want to be different, but still use an old face, Akzidenz Grotesk? Or the much more modern Meta? All are clean, simple and, like the old logo, timeless. This effort look out of date next week. Venture 3 do have a penchant for rounded faces and families--see their work for HMV. I understand that they want to get rid of Nipper!
Re: footballers names
I believe it has something to do with the brain being able to parse lower-case words more quickly than upper-case words (i.e. helps the ref/commentators/etc). It is for this reason that all UK road signs were changed from all upper-case to leading-capital only way back in the 60s (search for "Transport Font").
Of course, this could be pure coincidence.
Back on topic: Old W is better, but besmirched by Wikipedia. New w is crap, and will provide much fodder for ne'er-do-wells to draw nipples on.
@ TeeCee Re: Your Comment
In the literary words of Margaret Atwood's Snowman - or equally the dumbed down vocabulary of Bill S. Preston Esquire - quintessentially interpretable by statesman and footballer alike:
BOGUS!
I kinda like lower-case...
mainly because it reminds me of shell commands.
what on God's Green Earth was wrong with the old logo
There's a new face making his/her "outstanding, nay revolutionary, contribution to the business"*, nothing more, nothing less.
* Substitute your own vacuous superlatives according to taste.
It's a title already
From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
dug (n.)
"animal nipple," or, contemptuously, "the human female breast," 1530, origin obscure, related to Swed. dagga, Dan. dægge "to suckle."
Re: It's a title already
Okay. Learnt a new word today. Thanks.
Actually...
...I learned that people have way too much time to search for obscure meanings in online dictionarys!
What have they actually changed...?
Is this a new logo for the whole company, or just the internet brand?
I ask because their blogs, marketplace and store finder all use the old Serif logo and refer to "waterstone's". The only place they are reliably using the saggy tits and "waterstones.com" is for their web presence.
In which case, the new logo makes much more sense - differentiating the stores from the (presumably cheaper) web store...
You missed...
The subtle addition of .com to make them trendy!
Change for change's sake
Maybe Waterstone's just had too much money lying around that they wanted to get rid of? I certainly can't think how they stand to benefit from such a pointless effort in re-branding.
Font face
Just how much have they charged for a lowercase 'w' in the Ubuntu Titling font? I'd have done it for a fiver.
Redundant title.
No self-respecting trendy design company would have charged anything south of £200,000. And don't forget the cost of reprinting all the stationery. Ker-ching!
Am I the only one...
who is going to point out that this new logo looks NOTHING like the purported "pair of pendulous dugs"?
There's something seriously wrong with you lot..
You're not the only one
I'm not too sure how many of the blokes here have enough real-life experience to recognise real dugs when they see them.
I won't be logging back on for a month, so don't bother.
Re: Looks nothing like
I, for one, sir, applaud and commend you for avoiding any and all attempts for the more matronly ladies in your aquaintance to ever be exposed to you, either by accident or intent. Saving your sight and mind for the younger (yet still legal), buxomer generation is a goal of us all.
This looks like a pair o' granny melons so much I still expect her to shout at me to close the door...
RIP to Grannies' perkiness everywhere.
Nope
Urgh. Early contender for most pointless rebrand of the year, especially if they redo all their shopfronts and instore promo stuff . Its not as if its hard to spot their store on a high street or in an airport or wherever, its the one with books in the windows.
two fingers
Is what I thought, though not stuck up in front of the shareholders to say "look what we can do instead of increased dividends"
Case
A book seller using lower case for the first letter of their name. Sick, sad world.
Well done all
Clearly the new logo worked since here you all are talking about it, the company, and after all it got El Reg to do an entire article about it.
Seems like those marketing people know what they're doing...
Not quite a Ratners' moment
People are talking about it doesn't necessarily mean it's good for the brand.
@Christopher W
it's making use of HMV's letter 'm' because they own waterstones....should have been a very cheap makeover! still pointless in my opionion, it was fine before.
I like...
the red arrow. Nice color. Should be part of the Logo.
Go on Waterstones..
Go on, tell us how MUCH you paid for THAT.
Why didn't the Execs just pop down to the Business & Marketing section and grab a copy of "Pointless & Expensive Rebranding for Dummies"?.
At least you didn't change your name to something like BookVendia.
Ooooh classy
'BookVendia' - I like it - it's got a streetwise camel case that'll look great on a carrier bag. I hope you've trademarked it for six months time when Waterstone's need yet another rebrand to try and ignore the fact they're a really shite bookstore.
Clearly we're all in the wrong business
If you can get paid millions to simply change a font...
Dear Mr Waterstone, I have an amazing offer for you, its quite literally the outfit of the millennium, noone will ever where anything like it. Of course, it can only be seen by those with a great level of intelligence, but I'm sure that won't be a problem for you....
Titletastic
Perhaps they just ordered too many 'M's for HMV and needed to get rid of them.
Economical, practical, mammarical.
Terry Pratchett would be proud
In addition to selling his books, they are advertising one of his newest - Unseen Academicals. The new symbol is on their strips.
you want a title? you got one
Waterstones = Books
Books = serif typeface
Logo = Playmobile
I'm sure readers more intelligent than me can resolve that equation.
2012!
Would this be the same company that designed the 2012 Olympics logo?
You want that job. Seriously.
The doe-eyed black-wearing Nathan Barley with shades just like Bono's just earned more that you ever will in your entire life by doing that re-branding.
Think about it.
It's about time we had a REVOLUTION!
I just can't work out who should be first against the wall; but corporate re-branders can have VIP tickets!
All I'm saying is
you lot, the whole lot of you, need to get out more, story author and all commentards.
Where is a moderatrix when you need one?
It's fairly obvious...
If people are considering the resembelence between the logo and a pair of breasts, then it's obvious why the change had to be made. The earlier logo clearly belonged to Madonna.
Tim Waterstone must be pissed
Last bit of the company he founderd effectively gone.
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