Rebranding Commentary

Rebranding identities is a tricky business. Here are my thoughts on a recent LinkedIn post:

The Gap: Awful and amateurish. That’s why it died before it could be implemented.

Max: Dumb. Max means nothing to anyone except the internal marketing people who probably refer to it as “Max” and decided to go in this direction. HBO is everything but got cut out entirely.

Noika: Sure. Why not. Update the logotype and soon it will become ubiquitous.

Norstrom: Rank amateur. Even though this is the discount shop for a premium brand, they dumbed down the logo with a garish trendy font.

X: There is something bigger at play that has yet to unfold. Yes, I still call it Twitter. But “Twitter”, “tweeting” and the little blue bird aren’t big enough ideas to establish the world’s largest town square. Not exciting, but I don’t think the platform has finished changing. We’ll see.

Patreon: Try again. No one in the course of humanity ever got excited about a blob.

J&J: This is insulting. They claim the younger generations cannot read cursive, which is probably true, but studies have shown people do not recognize words by the individual letters but by the shapes the words form. Throwing away that much brand equity for a short-term solution is a crime against design.