I found the Met's rebrand interesting to consider.
I am on the younger side/moved to New York recently. Without knowing the history of the Met logo I have always found the (new) logo fairly iconic- the stickers visitors wear, and the various paraphernalia with the logo look good to me. I find it clean and sharp. I think I actually prefer it to the old logo (which I do not remember seeing before today)
People fear change and cling to nostalgia. That's part of it. Another thing is people identify themselves with brands, so when the brand changes, it's like a part of them changes, without their input or consent (!!). That you've never known the old logo frees you from these constraints.
I try not to care about corporate logos too much, but I have to say I was little betrayed when my football team changed their typeface from a unique font to a more generic one, because I feel that represents me and my city (even moreso than my city's local museum, whose new logo I don't prefer, but I don't let it get to me).
As someone who never saw the old or the new logo before today, the old logo looks ugly and forgettable to me. If you gave me $1000 a week from now, I don’t think I can recall what organization that logo belongs to
I like it because it adapted its image to its nickname. "The Metropolitan Museum of Art" is the museum's full name - embracing "The Met" formally is a nice, humanizing touch.
As a tourist, I prefer the full name. I never knew what "the Met" was until know. It clearly stands for Metropolitan. But Metropolitan what? Police? Works? The full name is much more accessible and less intimidating.
It confuses me. There's also the Metropolitan Opera, the Metropolitan Club, the Metropolitan Life Insurance company and probably a dozen more. At least the baseball team, the NY Mets, is plural.
Who cares? It says Oxford University Press which is the important part. The little image above it is just fluff and literally doesn't matter. I certainly wouldn't call it 'unfathomably bad' considering it's not a child's drawing or a some obscene gesture.
> Who cares? It says Oxford University Press which is the important part. The little image above it is just fluff and literally doesn't matter. I certainly wouldn't call it 'unfathomably bad' considering it's not a child's drawing or a some obscene gesture.
It's modernist, minimalist crap, indistinguishable from all the other modernist, minimalist crap. Everyone might as well rebrand as solid-color circle distinguished by a numerically unique RGB value.
Their old logo was much better, since it harkens back to a literal coat of arms, which isn't something you see every day.
Undoubtedly influenced by Oxford and Cambridge but it's a design style adopted by so many universities it's practically generic for 'some sort of university thing logo'. I don't have strong feelings about the new logo either way but the idea the old one is some distinctive masterpiece seems misplaced.
> a literal coat of arms, which isn't something you see every day
Except that a coat of arms has got to be THE most common logo for anything university related. I don't like the new one at all, but if you'd showed me the old one and asked me what it was for I'd have had no idea. Not memorable or recognizable at all, even if it is their coat of arms.
It's probably good for a few seconds of confusion on the part of people who see the logo and don't recognize it because it looks like a zillion other logos and has no continuity with the old logo.
So no big deal.
Although. There is Steve Jobs line. Where's he's trying to get engineers on the original Mac to eek out just a slight faster boot. We're going to sell 100 million of these things, can you make it boot 25 seconds faster? If you do that will save cumulatively 90 years worth of time. That's a human life. Can you save a human life!
I mean it's dumb and maybe funny but a minor annoyance over a long enough time and enough people could be worth complaining about.
I care. I own a number of Oxford press books. The old logo says to me “serious, distinguished, trustworthy, academic, has been around long enough to be taken seriously, etc.”
Presumably the people at OUP do care, because they actually paid for it. That's the author's point: if you are trying to signal something with a rebrand, how about putting the money into the actual thing instead of going through a pointless rebranding exercise and losing your identity in the process?
It's lost history. The Latin text on the old logo connects the present with the past. There would have been thousands of instances where people would have thought "what does that mean" and have a browse through history.
That history represents 400 years of colonialism. Latin represents classism and racism and denies the history of billions of marginalized peoples.
Thus, it must change because the purpose of a university is not to retain cultures and histories when no one else cares, it's not to improve the mental capabilities of the students.
It purpose instead is to pursue equity in 2 senses: no especially talented people of the wrong* parents are allowed to gain inordinate skills and the foundation makes gobs of money.
(*) Determination of wrongness changes over time, and the adage "2 wrongs don't make a right" is considered tomfoolery.
> “Try to be brutally honest with yourself: is the goal actual innovation? Or is really to appear innovative?” I have asked these questions of many senior executives now, assuring them I am not being glib
This type of reaction eats itself. If you're a person who prioritizes "actual innovation," why are you spending so much time complaining about a fucking logo redesign?
> explaining that these objectives are often in fundamental opposition to one another.
No, they're not. Is Apple innovative? Is Google? Both examples of companies who have demonstrated tremendous amount of investment in design updates over the years. Heck, they even created custom fonts for their blog posts.
I totally understand and appreciate design critiques. Aesthetic opinions are valuable in and of themselves. I even happen to agree with the author that the new Oxford Press logo is worse than their old one. But I have to jump off the wagon when this sort of exaggeration shows up.
> If you're a person who prioritizes "actual innovation," why are you spending so much time complaining about a fucking logo redesign
Because that logo redesign does not produce any actual innovation.
> Heck, they even created custom fonts for their blog posts.
These companies have lots of money, lots of managers, lots of designers. Those people would have nothing to do if they don't rebrand, create new fonts etc. They can't just sit idle in office and take salary. If those fonts were not made, nothing would have changed right now, the company would not have any less progress in any way.
People also do these to have something big on their resume, to get promotion. This is what lots of humans do now, bullshit jobs even though there are much bigger problems to fix in the world.
I profoundly dislike the new logo as it erodes an ever diminishing bygone-era of graphic design.
Traditional cyphers, monograms and other iconography are time-bound to the pre-20th century (n < 1901). In recent years I've noticed an acute shift to brutalism, minimalism and a loss of individuality in all facets of life. One needs to look no further than something as mundane as bollards, forgive me for my tangent but consider these two examples, one from the 19th century [1] and another from the 20th [2]. Granted this is not a scientific or thorough analysis, it is surely riddled with bias, but there is an unmistable trend towards not just forgetting, but neglecting our history of design and ornamentation.
Not everything needs to be redesigned, not everything needs a modern sans-serif font. Oxford University is the worlds foremost academic institute; founded in 1096; the Press founded in 1586! The previous logo represented this ancient authority and acts as a vessel to a far-away land in this present day.
This type of craftsmanship can not be created anew for they are not of this time, the juxtaposition of such symbolism paired with a modern institute would be nothing less of disingenuous. Therefore we must - for the good of history - preserve these works.
Perceived loss of individuality is frequently just an outcome of a design epoch change. Most logos that we thought were unique and had lots of individuality came from an era when that particular graphic design style was en vogue. Then later the logos were updated to better follow new trends (a vary fair desire for a business). Yes, Art Nouveau logos were pretty but the vast majority of logos in that era were designed in that style (so not some amazing level of individuality). Same with the sci-fi logos in the 80s (which I still think were ugly). Same with any other trend. Not really a question of individuality.
> Not everything needs to be redesigned, not everything needs a modern sans-serif font.
If the new typeface reads better then why not use it? If the new logo fits a wider variety of placements or prompts a better response from this generation then why not use it?
It's not just a "perceived" loss of individuality. The new logos discussed in that linked article, especially the fashion ones, suck in my opinion because they're boring and they all look the same. They at least used to have some good degree of variability.
You seem to be discussing individuality in style choice, while totally ignoring capacity for individuality within the style that is en vogue. Brutalist/minimalist logos with modern san serif fonts don't leave much room to explore for individuality. Meanwhile art nouveau or 80s sci-fi for example had a LOT of overhead for flexing individuality.
Minimalism is also a tradition in logos. A logo needs to serve many purposes, one of which is being recognizable even under poor visibility. Many national flags are the height of minimal design, because one key goal for them was to be seen in battle so you knew where your side was.
Modern technology has different reasons for a similar purpose. Resolution may be poor because of your screen or network rather than battle smoke, but the idea is similar.
The OUP logo isn't a battle flag, and could afford more detail than this logo. But OUP is a living entity. Its history is important, but so are its ongoing contributions. They don't want people looking at their books and thinking, "This logo is very old-fashioned; maybe the book is also out of date."
Were it me, I'd have at least hinted at its prior logo. To me, the problem with the new one isn't its minimalism, but its lack of personality. You don't need a lot to have personality; the Twitter logo is very much theirs. Even the Facebook "f" logo, dull as it is, at least has a letter linking to them. (A circle isn't an O; it might even have worked better if it were an O with the same theme.)
There are near-identical flags as well, including Chad and Romania, Indonesia (again) and Morocco, New Zealand and Australia, Ireland and Cote d'Ivoire, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, Senegal and Mali, and clusters such as the Nordics (blue/red cross/field), Latin America (yellow, blue, red), and Slavic states (white, blue, and red).
While your points are technically valid, there is a balance that needs to be struct without losing its core value and purpose. I think this is the cliche explanation for making logos that do not serve their core purpose: To differentiate and iconify an identity.
I am kind of in GP's camp, design culture has gone to shit in last 20 years. It's not even Brutalism/Minimalism in the true sense of the word, those movements were post-modern starting from 1950's triggered by the zeitgeist of Bauhause in 1930's. What you're seeing today is deep lack of understanding and following each other like a mad mob. It is to nullify identity, doing exactly what it is not intended to.
Hell, even macOS and Windows look similar today. They're converging on a singular global monoculture.
It reminds me of an old Digitiser article, called ‘Modern Game Logos are Rubbish’. It was written in 2016 and discussed the burgeoning trend of using a distressed Impact font for game titles and logos, but more generally a shift away from ‘fun’ looking logos.
From my simplistic outsider perspective, sometimes I think that designers read “perfection is not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away,” and take it so literally that logos and brands start to converge on a single style (simple coloured shapes, sans-serif font).
Is it really 'neglect', when ornamentation is deliberately attacked and avoided [1,2]? When this [3] is what modern architecture thinks a church should look like? They'll give excuses that it's due to cost cutting, then build things like [4] when funding isn't an issue.
Not that we should be surprised by lies - all war is waged by deception.
Frankly, I think all of the buildings from your link 4 look breathtaking. They inspire a sense of awe and wonder in me - they don't look real or plausible in some way, but yet there they are, in the large. Having lots of ornamentation would very much detract from the un-real-ness of the surfaces.
The church from 3 really does look atrocious though - though even there, the interior where you are surrounded by stained glass seems like it would be quite impressive to experience directly.
Note that I also think other styles of monumental buildings are breathtaking. I was recently in Florence and could barely take my eyes off of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral (with its 19th century Gothic Revival facade), and similarly when I saw the Duomo in Milan or the San Pietro cathedral in Rome. But part of the beauty of architecture is seeing different styles. Another stunning building was the Pantheon in Rome - which is extremely minimalistic when compared to medieval cathedrals, but still outstanding in its design (knowing you're walking into a >2000 year old building also adds to the feeling).
I'm sure architects will eventually have their fill with brutalism and invent something new after it, and there will also be beautfiul examples of that new thing, and horrible examples as well.
What's more depressing is the examples you point out could be located in literally any large city in the entire world, such is the utter banality and dislocation of the modernist aesthetic.
Having them covered with graffiti would actually be an improvement in this respect.
In recent years I've noticed an acute shift to brutalism, minimalism and a loss of individuality in all facets of life.
Is there really evidence of this? Those stylistic developments are 100+ old and have been part of everyday life for much of the last century. There's definitely been a much more recent uptick of commentary that's uncomfortably (and occasionally deliberately) close to some classic complaints about 'degenerate art'.
Well, you can thank Jony Ive for taking over the UI as well as the hardware, and rebranding the entire iOS experience in his minimalistic image.
Looks like a bunch of people went to do the same thing in OUP. They probably launched a campaign labeling the thing on the left “skeumorphism” or its equivalent.
I remember when Apple’s interfaces were iconic and user friendly. Then in iOS 7 I couldn’t figure out where the chrome ended and the webpage/document began anymore. The search bar in Google Chrome on iOS was literally a blank white space. I had to tap there to discover search.
Apple… known the world over as a UX leader for its UX guidelines since 1980s … became a follower … of Microsoft’s new mobile interface. Which was later totally discontinued by Microsoft. Well, at least Wozniak liked it.
I remember when SGI (Silicon Graphics) paid a bunch of money to rebrand to . . . drumroll . . . SGI!
The consultants must have been high-fiving each other after that one landed, it's like trading in your car only to find that the saleswoman has sold you your own car back, at a profit.
(SGI later collapsed due to "Corporate Campus Syndrome", and other companies, including Google, now occupy the wacky buildings they spent even more money on. It's kind of like a higher order of hermit crab).
The reason I'm not allowed in polite circles is after they present those 3 options, I'd laugh, compliment the great joke and ask them when the real presentation was going to begin.
Yeah, so a couple years back the "Technische Universität Berlin" rebranded to "Berlin Universität der Technologie" or Berlin University of Technology. Because they thought that would be more similar to e.g. MIT and the like. Of course the abbreviation then would be BUT... Thankfully it did not stick and they are back to Technical University of Berlin.
Usually a logo/rebrand change keeps the name. So no real suprise.
That said, SGI had an iconic logo of a cube formed from a single periodic pipe before.
I was using SGIs daily at the time and I almost cried when they did the rebrand.
The rebrand replaced it with a contemporary (at the time, mind you) typography logo that would look outdated if the compamy still existed.
To their credit, the rebrand did include a typeface design for use with all their design, i.e. detached from the logo.
The resp. fonts would have the aforementioned issues though -- one variant was used for the logo which is kinda cheap.
But at least they had a tyepface designed and it was recognizable. That rarely happens. Commonly a rebrand will just swap the old typeface for something different but already existing.
Rebranded in 1999, according to Wikipedia. I would think the old logo looked really bad on the web at the time, with monitors being 640 × 480 at 256 colors, if you were lucky. It also would have been expensive to reproduce well on letterhead, and I wouldn’t dare think of how that looked on photocopies (often monochrome at the time)
Now, could they have stylized/simplified the old logo and keep it nice? I wouldn’t know.
TIL Google occupies SGI's former headquarters. A college professor mentioned working for SGI, so I knew they existed and had importance, but I didn't realize their business had collapsed.
The workstation market got undercut by the improving performance of intel PCs with accelerators from companies like 3D Labs. There's plenty you could criticize SGI management for, but all the unix workstation vendors ended up getting pushed out by that in the end. SGI continued on for a bit selling supercomputers, as they had some multiprocessor interconnect technology that was good for its time. But that got spun out as SGI died, and is now the Cray division of HP.
It's sad what happened to them, as in their prime they really were a category of their own.
They were one of the contenders in the early days of the web as everyone was trying to get bigger web servers, rather than numerous commodity web servers that we have today.
They built single big machines and gave away the best swag. The leather jacket, in particular, was coveted.
I feel like we are going to look back at logos from this time period and wonder what was going on and why everyone ceased to enjoy nice things.
I understand why graphic design has taken this direction. Everything needs to be able to scale to the tiniest little profile icon on websites, but it doesn’t make it much better.
I also think a lot more graphic designers these days lack a more traditional art background and so you don’t see the same amount of artistic flourishes.
Because every damn hipster with a custom mechanical keyboard who can install Photoshop on his Mac is now suddenly a Designer. This is beyond appalling. These people must be beaten very hard with metal poles.
The Royal Astronomical Society seems like a pretty good example of the opposite.
The old logo was, well old, very forgettable and not particularly well constructed in the first place.
The new logo presents the society as a modern scientific institution, and the logo itself is executed well. And the animation actually works, a rare example where logo animation is not gratuitous.
That RAS logo is beautiful, stylish, intricate, and quite recognizable - especially with its clever use of telescopes as rays and of the empty spaces to remind one of celestial bodies. I have no idea why you think it's comparable to the simplistic unintelligible symbolism of the new OUP one.
I assume this logo is going on the spines of books.
This means that you are taking a recognizable easy to spot image that says: 'this book is vetted and serious, trust it like you trust us', and replacing it with a logo that is less recognizable (and by my prediction won't be around in 100 years). For anyone who browses shelves this will, in fact, reduce utility.
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I am on the younger side/moved to New York recently. Without knowing the history of the Met logo I have always found the (new) logo fairly iconic- the stickers visitors wear, and the various paraphernalia with the logo look good to me. I find it clean and sharp. I think I actually prefer it to the old logo (which I do not remember seeing before today)
I try not to care about corporate logos too much, but I have to say I was little betrayed when my football team changed their typeface from a unique font to a more generic one, because I feel that represents me and my city (even moreso than my city's local museum, whose new logo I don't prefer, but I don't let it get to me).
People devalue the past is another.
I doubt an American museum could ever change that, embracing something so generic is limiting for identity & brand awareness IMO.
It's pretty confusing.
The old logo was honestly a bit messy, too, though.
Lower serifs on the Ts though, those I dislike very much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_Western_Reserve_Universit...
Is it as bad as the Met's new logo? Probably not. Is it pretty objectionable, and universally maligned? Yeah, definitely.
Anybody else got one to share for our shared schadenfreude?
https://www.seriouspieseattle.com/
scroll down until you see the man with his penis on fire. It's on all their signs.
Why does he also have no arms?
Wow, this took me a second but now it’s the only thing I can see.
The 2020 MLB spring training hat logos were universally hated, but the Padres had a notably bad one: https://www.crossingbroad.com/2020/02/padres-changing-spring...
I think it is supposed to represent two arms grasping each other, but that wasn't the first thing that came to mind when I saw it.
[1] https://imgur.com/a/kXl5S36
https://euclidnetwork.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/roskilde...
I used to call it "brain sponge" when I was a PhD student there. (I liked that university a lot, don't get me wrong, just talking about the logo).
Yeah, this new OUP logo looks great for a surf school too. Definitely a wave in the circle.
It's modernist, minimalist crap, indistinguishable from all the other modernist, minimalist crap. Everyone might as well rebrand as solid-color circle distinguished by a numerically unique RGB value.
Their old logo was much better, since it harkens back to a literal coat of arms, which isn't something you see every day.
Undoubtedly influenced by Oxford and Cambridge but it's a design style adopted by so many universities it's practically generic for 'some sort of university thing logo'. I don't have strong feelings about the new logo either way but the idea the old one is some distinctive masterpiece seems misplaced.
Except that a coat of arms has got to be THE most common logo for anything university related. I don't like the new one at all, but if you'd showed me the old one and asked me what it was for I'd have had no idea. Not memorable or recognizable at all, even if it is their coat of arms.
Which is, like, just your opinion, man.
Maybe here not there, but A quick google search suggests a university with a coat of arms logo is very common.
So no big deal.
Although. There is Steve Jobs line. Where's he's trying to get engineers on the original Mac to eek out just a slight faster boot. We're going to sell 100 million of these things, can you make it boot 25 seconds faster? If you do that will save cumulatively 90 years worth of time. That's a human life. Can you save a human life!
I mean it's dumb and maybe funny but a minor annoyance over a long enough time and enough people could be worth complaining about.
The new logo is not one I could take seriously.
Airbrushed and homogenised in favour of a tire.
Thus, it must change because the purpose of a university is not to retain cultures and histories when no one else cares, it's not to improve the mental capabilities of the students.
It purpose instead is to pursue equity in 2 senses: no especially talented people of the wrong* parents are allowed to gain inordinate skills and the foundation makes gobs of money.
(*) Determination of wrongness changes over time, and the adage "2 wrongs don't make a right" is considered tomfoolery.
Spend some time researching the subject and it will make more sense.
This type of reaction eats itself. If you're a person who prioritizes "actual innovation," why are you spending so much time complaining about a fucking logo redesign?
> explaining that these objectives are often in fundamental opposition to one another.
No, they're not. Is Apple innovative? Is Google? Both examples of companies who have demonstrated tremendous amount of investment in design updates over the years. Heck, they even created custom fonts for their blog posts.
I totally understand and appreciate design critiques. Aesthetic opinions are valuable in and of themselves. I even happen to agree with the author that the new Oxford Press logo is worse than their old one. But I have to jump off the wagon when this sort of exaggeration shows up.
Because that logo redesign does not produce any actual innovation.
> Heck, they even created custom fonts for their blog posts.
These companies have lots of money, lots of managers, lots of designers. Those people would have nothing to do if they don't rebrand, create new fonts etc. They can't just sit idle in office and take salary. If those fonts were not made, nothing would have changed right now, the company would not have any less progress in any way.
People also do these to have something big on their resume, to get promotion. This is what lots of humans do now, bullshit jobs even though there are much bigger problems to fix in the world.
Traditional cyphers, monograms and other iconography are time-bound to the pre-20th century (n < 1901). In recent years I've noticed an acute shift to brutalism, minimalism and a loss of individuality in all facets of life. One needs to look no further than something as mundane as bollards, forgive me for my tangent but consider these two examples, one from the 19th century [1] and another from the 20th [2]. Granted this is not a scientific or thorough analysis, it is surely riddled with bias, but there is an unmistable trend towards not just forgetting, but neglecting our history of design and ornamentation.
Not everything needs to be redesigned, not everything needs a modern sans-serif font. Oxford University is the worlds foremost academic institute; founded in 1096; the Press founded in 1586! The previous logo represented this ancient authority and acts as a vessel to a far-away land in this present day.
This type of craftsmanship can not be created anew for they are not of this time, the juxtaposition of such symbolism paired with a modern institute would be nothing less of disingenuous. Therefore we must - for the good of history - preserve these works.
1: https://assets.londonist.com/uploads/2022/06/i875/guard_post... 2: https://kentstainless1.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/...
> Not everything needs to be redesigned, not everything needs a modern sans-serif font.
If the new typeface reads better then why not use it? If the new logo fits a wider variety of placements or prompts a better response from this generation then why not use it?
It's not just a "perceived" loss of individuality. The new logos discussed in that linked article, especially the fashion ones, suck in my opinion because they're boring and they all look the same. They at least used to have some good degree of variability.
Modern technology has different reasons for a similar purpose. Resolution may be poor because of your screen or network rather than battle smoke, but the idea is similar.
The OUP logo isn't a battle flag, and could afford more detail than this logo. But OUP is a living entity. Its history is important, but so are its ongoing contributions. They don't want people looking at their books and thinking, "This logo is very old-fashioned; maybe the book is also out of date."
Were it me, I'd have at least hinted at its prior logo. To me, the problem with the new one isn't its minimalism, but its lack of personality. You don't need a lot to have personality; the Twitter logo is very much theirs. Even the Facebook "f" logo, dull as it is, at least has a letter linking to them. (A circle isn't an O; it might even have worked better if it were an O with the same theme.)
Indonesia is Poland distressed (and vice versa).
(See: <https://www.wikihow.com/Know-if-a-Union-Jack-Has-Been-Hung-U...> for general concept.)
There are near-identical flags as well, including Chad and Romania, Indonesia (again) and Morocco, New Zealand and Australia, Ireland and Cote d'Ivoire, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, Senegal and Mali, and clusters such as the Nordics (blue/red cross/field), Latin America (yellow, blue, red), and Slavic states (white, blue, and red).
<https://www.britannica.com/list/flags-that-look-alike>
There's the challenge between readily identified and readily distinguished.
I am kind of in GP's camp, design culture has gone to shit in last 20 years. It's not even Brutalism/Minimalism in the true sense of the word, those movements were post-modern starting from 1950's triggered by the zeitgeist of Bauhause in 1930's. What you're seeing today is deep lack of understanding and following each other like a mad mob. It is to nullify identity, doing exactly what it is not intended to.
Hell, even macOS and Windows look similar today. They're converging on a singular global monoculture.
https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/modern-game-logos-ar...
From my simplistic outsider perspective, sometimes I think that designers read “perfection is not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away,” and take it so literally that logos and brands start to converge on a single style (simple coloured shapes, sans-serif font).
Not that we should be surprised by lies - all war is waged by deception.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornament_and_Crime
[2] https://theculturetrip.com/europe/articles/ornament-is-crime...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Wilhelm_Memorial_Church... - The initial design included the demolition of the spire of the old church but following pressure from the public, it was decided to incorporate it into the new design.
[4] https://www.format.com/magazine/galleries/design/best-contem...
The church from 3 really does look atrocious though - though even there, the interior where you are surrounded by stained glass seems like it would be quite impressive to experience directly.
Note that I also think other styles of monumental buildings are breathtaking. I was recently in Florence and could barely take my eyes off of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral (with its 19th century Gothic Revival facade), and similarly when I saw the Duomo in Milan or the San Pietro cathedral in Rome. But part of the beauty of architecture is seeing different styles. Another stunning building was the Pantheon in Rome - which is extremely minimalistic when compared to medieval cathedrals, but still outstanding in its design (knowing you're walking into a >2000 year old building also adds to the feeling).
I'm sure architects will eventually have their fill with brutalism and invent something new after it, and there will also be beautfiul examples of that new thing, and horrible examples as well.
Having them covered with graffiti would actually be an improvement in this respect.
Is there really evidence of this? Those stylistic developments are 100+ old and have been part of everyday life for much of the last century. There's definitely been a much more recent uptick of commentary that's uncomfortably (and occasionally deliberately) close to some classic complaints about 'degenerate art'.
Looks like a bunch of people went to do the same thing in OUP. They probably launched a campaign labeling the thing on the left “skeumorphism” or its equivalent.
I remember when Apple’s interfaces were iconic and user friendly. Then in iOS 7 I couldn’t figure out where the chrome ended and the webpage/document began anymore. The search bar in Google Chrome on iOS was literally a blank white space. I had to tap there to discover search.
Apple… known the world over as a UX leader for its UX guidelines since 1980s … became a follower … of Microsoft’s new mobile interface. Which was later totally discontinued by Microsoft. Well, at least Wozniak liked it.
https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234
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The consultants must have been high-fiving each other after that one landed, it's like trading in your car only to find that the saleswoman has sold you your own car back, at a profit.
(SGI later collapsed due to "Corporate Campus Syndrome", and other companies, including Google, now occupy the wacky buildings they spent even more money on. It's kind of like a higher order of hermit crab).
* University of Portsmouth
* The University of Portsmouth
* Portsmouth University
That said, SGI had an iconic logo of a cube formed from a single periodic pipe before. I was using SGIs daily at the time and I almost cried when they did the rebrand.
The rebrand replaced it with a contemporary (at the time, mind you) typography logo that would look outdated if the compamy still existed.
To their credit, the rebrand did include a typeface design for use with all their design, i.e. detached from the logo.
The resp. fonts would have the aforementioned issues though -- one variant was used for the logo which is kinda cheap.
But at least they had a tyepface designed and it was recognizable. That rarely happens. Commonly a rebrand will just swap the old typeface for something different but already existing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Graphics#/media/File%3...
Rebranded in 1999, according to Wikipedia. I would think the old logo looked really bad on the web at the time, with monitors being 640 × 480 at 256 colors, if you were lucky. It also would have been expensive to reproduce well on letterhead, and I wouldn’t dare think of how that looked on photocopies (often monochrome at the time)
Now, could they have stylized/simplified the old logo and keep it nice? I wouldn’t know.
It's sad what happened to them, as in their prime they really were a category of their own.
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They built single big machines and gave away the best swag. The leather jacket, in particular, was coveted.
I understand why graphic design has taken this direction. Everything needs to be able to scale to the tiniest little profile icon on websites, but it doesn’t make it much better.
I also think a lot more graphic designers these days lack a more traditional art background and so you don’t see the same amount of artistic flourishes.
Because every damn hipster with a custom mechanical keyboard who can install Photoshop on his Mac is now suddenly a Designer. This is beyond appalling. These people must be beaten very hard with metal poles.
The old logo was, well old, very forgettable and not particularly well constructed in the first place.
The new logo presents the society as a modern scientific institution, and the logo itself is executed well. And the animation actually works, a rare example where logo animation is not gratuitous.
We only use artisanal free-range wooden spatulas to deliver "corrective encouragement" in a carbon-free manner.
This means that you are taking a recognizable easy to spot image that says: 'this book is vetted and serious, trust it like you trust us', and replacing it with a logo that is less recognizable (and by my prediction won't be around in 100 years). For anyone who browses shelves this will, in fact, reduce utility.
It's a small thing, but it is worth considering.