back to article New! Yahoo! logo! shows! Marissa! Meyer's! personal! touch!

After 18 years the Yahoo! logo has had a redesign, courtesy of newish boss Marissa Mayer and her team, who spent a weekend hammering out the new look for the company. New Yahoo! logo Behold Marissa's new creation! "On a personal level, I love brands, logos, color, design, and, most of all, Adobe Illustrator," Mayer wrote …

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  1. mhoulden

    That took a whole weekend? I'm guessing 2 minutes in MS Word Art and the rest of the time doing whatever Silicon Valley execs do instead of going to the pub. Nice work if you can get it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      >>and the rest of the time doing whatever Silicon Valley execs do instead of going to the pub

      I would imagine that it would be Cocaine. Or something less fun like reading the FT, WSJ, and/or Economist.

    2. LarsG

      Sorry but the tilting exclamation mark just annoys me.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
        Happy

        LarsG,

        Now you've just exposed your lack of whimsy to the whole internet...

    3. Electric Panda

      Somebody managed to make an identical copy of the London 2012 Olympics logo in just 10 minutes, using freeware graphics tools.

  2. Nate Amsden

    old logo better

    put me in the camp that thinks the old logo is far better. What a waste of time to come up with this crap.

    I'm not a regular yahoo! user(though I do use yahoo finance once or twice a month) so I guess it doesn't really matter.

    1. Arthur Jackson
      WTF?

      Re: old logo better

      Yahoo Finance always show an incorrect P/E ratio ( something to do with pence / pounds / dollars or whatever.

      It has been broken for years and they can't be arsed to fix it.

    2. CCCP
      Meh

      Re: old logo better

      The new logo looks utterly lost, especially on Yahoo UK. More scared than proud. Very mediocre.

      Unwittingly, I think she's helping erase what little collective goodwill was left for Yahoo internally or externally.

      And so it continues to sink into the ocean of oblivion.

  3. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Headline

    I thought I was going to have to wait for this story until tomorrow, so the exclamation-mark machines could run all night. Good job!

    1. monkeyfish

      Re: Headline

      But! surely! all! the! exclamation! marks! now! need! to! be! in! italics!

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Headline

        monkeyfish,

        Are you sure all those exclamation marks are at exactly 9°? If not, you're going to be in real trouble!

        I used to work for a US multi-national. I needed to put our logo on a template document, and along with the logos received the 21 page document explaining how to use it. Along with all the rules about colours, borders and backgrounds the logo must always be at exactly 19° - it never said why...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Headline

          "Along with all the rules about colours, borders and backgrounds the logo must always be at exactly 19° - it never said why..."

          The reason is, not putting too fine a point on it, that marketing people, and particularly those associated with "brand" are twats.

  4. Jan Hargreaves

    Is there something in css3 to tilt your exclamation point by 9 degrees? El Reg surely needs to use something like that for all future Yahoo headlines. Just to make them look as junior as that logo looks...

    1. Fibbles

      I've had a drink so there's a good chance this is wrong.

      <!DOCTYPE html>

      <html>

      <head>

      <style>

      .yahootext

      {

      float: left;

      }

      .yahooexclamation

      {

      float: right;

      transform:rotate(9deg);

      -ms-transform:rotate(9deg); /* IE 9 */

      -webkit-transform:rotate(9deg); /* Safari and Chrome */

      }

      </style>

      </head>

      <body>

      <div class="yahootext">YAHOO<div class="yahooexclamation">!</div></div>

      </body>

      </html>

      1. dan1980

        Drinking is always the right answer.

      2. Peter Gordon

        surely ! is close enough?

        Note to El Reg: Please update your headline with slanted exclamation marks! :)

        1. Fibbles
          Facepalm

          "surely ! is close enough?"

          Haha. Now that I think about it, 9 degrees is about the average deviation from vertical for italic text.

          Well done drunken me, well done.

  5. Herby

    And ...

    The old LOGO was bad because?

    Seems to me to be an exercise in wasting money.

    Look at it this way: Coca-Cola has had its logo for quite some time. The only thing that has changed in IBM's logo is the number of stripes.

    Go figure...

  6. Schultz

    Whow, a new logo

    I'll have to switch email provider now, wouldn't want to be caught with a boring company using last week's design.

    Actually, I side with Douglas Bowman on those things, but it's nice to see that the artsy types have remained busy those days.

  7. ceebee

    The old logo reflected a young slightly flippant corporation. This one is a like stodgy middle-aged parent trying to be cool but too afraid to let loose.

    Yahoo! has made such a mess of its UI changes .. profiles, Mail, Flickr (grrrrr) Groups.. why would anyone expect them to leave the logo alone.

  8. Fibbles

    "If this all sounds like marketing bollocks, that's because to a large extent it is. Very few users will look at the newly angled exclamation point and think "Gosh, what whimsy! Back in your box Oscar Wilde!" But to a certain kind of mind it's very important."

    It doesn't matter if the user isn't spending an age inspecting every small detail of the logo. It's the overall impression that it gives that is important. Ultimately that overall impression is made up of the small details.

    That said, with all those vertical lines the exclamation point just looks... wrong.

  9. Barry Rueger

    Holy Remind Me Of GeoCities Batman!

    Wow. Just for fun I opened a new tab and typed "yahoo.com" just to see what in the heck Yahoo! was doing these days.

    Ooooh-Kaaaay... I now know why I never visit Yahoo.com....

    1. Mint Sauce

      Re: Holy Remind Me Of GeoCities Batman!

      I just ran Yahoo.com through the Geocities-izer to see what would happen... I think I may have accidentally created a black hole =:-O

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Holy Remind Me Of GeoCities Batman!

      That's a busy page o' stuff. Not the fastest to load either, for some reason... I guess I shouldn't be surprised. We keep an old legacy BT email address, from before the company had a domain, and every so often I have to log into Yahoo Mail in order to unbreak it. Boy is that site a hideous ever-changing mess, where they seem to have pages and pages of news stories, half-dressed models and adverts, but hide the inbox button in ever smaller more out-of-the-way places. Actually a quick check shows they seem to have cleaned it up somewhat. So I assume that 6 months ago the Yahoo! main page must have been much worse too. Nice.

    3. Mike Flugennock
      FAIL

      Re: Holy Remind Me Of GeoCities Batman!

      Thanks to your post, so have I. Christ, that's dull. The new logo looks positively lost, man... not to mention more friggin' purple than I can stand.

  10. kain preacher

    New Stink

    This CEO is looking to put her stink all over Yahoo. She murder the last thing I found useful. Yahoo groups. I closed my flickr account. Whats left is a rotting corps.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: New Stink

      " She murder the last thing I found useful. Yahoo groups. I closed my flickr account."

      Flickr has become impossible to use for browsing pictures. I visit about once every two weeks. It takes about 5 seconds to establish that they haven't abandoned the "improvements" - so immediately quit the site.

      Yahoo Groups web interface has also lost one of its important content features.Previously a non-RichText posting would present a URL as a clickable link. Now you have to cut and paste to follow the URL.

  11. Frumious Bandersnatch

    Here's what they need:

    BROBDINGNAGIAN!

  12. This post has been deleted by its author

  13. Shades

    Pedant Alert!

    From the first image in the article, with regards to the exclamation mark:

    "Tilted 9° using centre of dot as a fulcrum"
    Do I need to say any more?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    The new logo looks much more staid and corporate

    I think that Yahoo! should keep the old logo if they want to try to be "hip". They don't have an enterprise business.

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Happy

      Re: The new logo looks much more staid and corporate

      Jeez! You guys are so un-hip, it's a wonder your bum's don't fall off!

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    We dont really care about yahoo...

    .. we just care about you Marissa.. only you...

  16. Fihart

    Fuckwits.

    Never mind the logo Yahooooo!!!, try listening to your remaining customers. Given recent reliability, performance, spam and account hijack problems with Mail, you certainly won't be getting any new customers.

  17. Kevin 6

    Wow I swore I had that same exact font they used like 20 years ago. So they used a font then changed the size of the last O... And that took a weekend?

    I swear this world is doomed with the piddly shit that millions of dollars are wasted on.

    Also I'm so mad at yahoo my mother uses them for e-mail, and I keep getting called every friggin day now that they changed that piece of shit cause the damn thing doesn't work right as half the time the buttons don't even load right. I think I might just move her to gmail(yes I know but they don't screw things up as bad)... Looking at what Marisa has done to Yahoo I think I now know why she never got promoted past a certain point at Google.

  18. Charles Manning

    Yahoo obviously running along very well

    Nothing else for the senior management to do than play with MS Paint.

    C'mon Marissa, isn't this micromanagement? Surely the graphics people could be doing this and you could be saving Yawho from the trainwreck that is Y!'s likely future.

  19. 142

    It's going to all be about context

    This new logo is going to look far better on the "flat design" type of site that's becoming the norm. The old one was a tad too busy in that context. For the most part, this logo seems to look ridiculous on the yahoo home page - all the proportions and styles are wrong - it's obvious the page wasn't designed around it.

    BUT - it looks pretty stylish in other contexts, especially with the inverted colours - I quite like it here: http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com

  20. Lars Silver badge

    Splendid

    Just what I have been waiting for, I think I can start using them now.

  21. dan1980

    Interesting, but pointless.

    I kind of like the old logo.

    That said, I am fascinated by the design process and the details, though I don't really care for the 'waisted' look in lettering.

    Looking at the way it was designed and the reasons, it's interesting and quite clever but just another example of design-by-committee - something that almost always ends up looking like it was designed by, well, a committee...

    While on the complete other end of the spectrum (boring and safe), it reminds me of the London 2012 marketing - the logo and those horrid characters. Everything was chosen to signify something or other that some stakeholder though was important and the result is an unfocused mess.

    On the Yahoo! logo, specifically, it's not a good sign. When a company starts with an 'edgy' logo in its youth and then later, once it has grown, changes the log to something that 'references' the old one, it's a pretty sure indication that said company is no longer young, edgy or dynamic.

  22. Alistair
    Coat

    say what?

    I'm sorry -- the whalesong was too loud, had to leave.

  23. Roger Greenwood

    Criticise all you like . . .

    . . . she got you lot (and plenty others) talking about it didn't she? I'd call that a win for a few hours work.

    1. Charles Manning

      Re: Criticise all you like . . .

      Talking isn't traction.

      I might have talked about this, but did I sign up or use a yawho service? No.

      Did any other comentard do so? I doubt it.

      Did the stock show an up-tick? Nope.

      Shit, she even posted this on Google's Youtube because nobody uses Y!Screen.

  24. Lottie

    Pub!

    I'm not drunk ossifer, this 9 degree lean is just whimsy, not inebreation!

  25. Shonko Kid
    Facepalm

    Which is louder

    The sound of whalesong, or the sound of the fiddlers.

    Either way, that purple TOTALLY says they've fixed all there problems, and are set on a course of world domination.

  26. frank ly

    "I'm not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous"

    That is often the problem and may be her epitaph.

  27. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    Pint

    Re : If this all sounds like marketing bollocks...

    "That's because to a large extent it is"

    Well said that man. Have a pint.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Micro-management

    This story reminds me of a news report last week about Fred "The Shred" Goodwin. The trauma of the collapse of RBS was ascribed to his obsession with minutiae rather than managing the big picture.

    The story used to illustrate it was that a man with a broom was seen sweeping outside the front door of his previous bank's headquarters of which he was the then boss. Apparently Fred's mother had rung him to say that there was a discarded cigarette butt on the pavement - so he interrupted his meeting to order a cleaner to be dispatched.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/fiddling-while-rbs-burned--new-book-reveals-fred-the-shred-goodwins-fatal-obsessions-8795202.html

  29. DToma

    There's more important things to be concerned about. A new logo will make Yahoo's stock prices skyrocket? How funny! Most members in my groups hadn't even noticed the logo was changing on a daily basis.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "tilt the exclamation point by 9 degrees" - that's why she's paid the big bucks I guess...

    I would have taken 10 mins fiddling with this and moved on to real work, not proclaim this as some kind of revelation.

  31. pSy

    pling

    This! Is! Getting! Kinda! Old!

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      No! It! Is! Not!

    2. Charles Manning

      Re: pling

      Use! them! while! you! can!

      Y! is! going! to! RIP! soon! and! then! what! will! we! do! with! our! surplus! !s!?

  32. Tom 64

    Is it just me,

    or is that purple colour just ghastly?

  33. Stilted Banter
    Facepalm

    The Golgafrincham solution

    Have felt for some time that Marissa's place on the B-Ark is already booked.

  34. Crisp

    Wow! What a logo!

    I'm going to start using their search engine this very second!

    Search results? Why would I be interested in how well the thing actually works?

  35. Moonshine
    Coat

    Alternative logo design - Marissa!

    I'm a big fan of MM you understand. Instead of the silly lettering how about a Andy Warhol style picture of Marissa as the logo? She's the best thing about Yahoo right now (or should I say the best thing about any Yahoo story which shows a picture of her ).

  36. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

    "9 degrees of Whimsy"

    It would make a good title for an autobiography.

  37. xperroni

    No such thing as bad publicity

    Today, curious about the new logo, I voluntarily entered Yahoo's site for the first time in years.

    Mission accomplished I guess?

  38. Stu

    Cosmetics logo anyone!?

    I think it might be Clinique. Looks awfully similar!

    Hardly surprising from a WOMAN! </controversial>

    1. xperroni

      Re: Cosmetics logo anyone!?

      Hardly surprising from a WOMAN! </controversial>

      Your attempt at starting a flame war is bad, and you should feel bad.

  39. graeme leggett Silver badge

    Logo changes

    I was on yahoo not ten minutes ago and didn't even notice that they had changed the logo let alone different ones over the last week.

    So I suppose I don't dislike it, which must be good for something.

  40. Anonymous Blowhard

    Blue sequel to 50 Shades of Grey?

    "they're testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better"

    1. Mike Flugennock
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: Blue sequel to 50 Shades of Grey?

      "they're testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better"

      Ouch, my brain just exploded.

      Granted, as a designer, I spend lots of time with clients hashing out which colors work on a logo or "identity" piece, but, still... their search engine is shit, their Web site is shit, their new groups/email interface is shit, the company's circling the drain, and Little Marissa is babbling about which shade of blue "performs better"?

      Cripes, somebody tie me to a railroad track.

  41. Mike Flugennock
    FAIL

    Speaking as a professional designer...

    ...with twenty years' combined experience with FreeHand and Illustrator, and another ten years pre-digital -- that's got to be the most mundane, boring-assed logo I've ever seen, and I've seen lots of boring-assed shit in my time.

    What's worse is all the banal babbling coming out of Little Marissa. Referring to that load of horseshit as "marketing bollocks" gives the term "bollocks" a bad name.

  42. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "daughter of an art teacher"

    Art teacher, not artist.

  43. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And the cost of the Logo?

    It might have taken the collective brains of Yahoo's leaders to invent this, likely aided by a few style consultants who actually knew what they were doing, but the real cost is likely to be in the millions, especially if they throw out all the old notepaper and update all their computer programs.

    MS Mayer may now retire,knowing she has made a lasting contribution to the company!

    1. ChrisElvidge

      Re: And the cost of the Logo?

      At least she didn't pay $LOGODESIGNER $1,000,000,000,000.

  44. John 62

    Optima

    Optima was far too bland a choice. To be fair I quite like the font and was very sad when Wimbledon dropped it from their scoreboards for the hideous-ness of Arial, but the lines are too thin and with all the detailing the new logo only looks good when it's very BIG. But the new logo it's being shoehorned in everywhere and they're making it small, hence you miss all the detailing and worse, it looks oddly blurred.

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