glog.glennf.com: Marissa Mayer is not a graphic designer. This is abundantly clear. She is an extraordinarily capable technologist, engineer, and executive, and she has made an enormous number of difficult decisions since taking over Yahoo. I believed she was likely the only person who had the ability to turn that company around.
But she's not a graphic designer.
5 comments:
The new Yahoo! logo is almost intimidating. It reminds me of industry, exactness, fabrication, and geometry; concepts none of which a social-based personal-use company should be propagating itself with. The author's description of design really stuck out to me: "It's about solving visual problems through an iterative process of decisionmaking, which may involve consultation, or may happen in private." This directly relates to the visual design processes that happen in theatre. This article made it very clear how similar graphic and theatrical design can be; both have a purpose other than to create pretty things for an audience. I believe this breakdown between engineer-administrators and their employed graphic designers can be similar to a theater in which the business side of the production does not appreciate or understand the art of storytelling and design.
The logo is pretty bad and it's true someone who knew what they were doing probably should have made it. I think that as more and more things in the world get digitized people are going to believe more and more that they can go and do things for themselves. I mean it makes sense right, everyone has a computer so everyone should be able to create anything that anyone else with a computer can create. WRONG! If I have learned nothing else from my mother (who is a graphic designer) I have learned this: You have your skills design or otherwise and even though the technology and tools in your industry will change your skills will not and as long as you can keep learning you can keep up with the technology you will be more useful than someone without the skills.
I would not be too surprised to see the logo change again. It seems to be gathering quite a bit of hatred. Especially Mayer who has insulted graphic designers everywhere and is not likely to get any applause even if secretly a couple people out there thought it was a good design. It would be embarrassing for them to change it now. But at the same time it would probably be less embarrassing than if they didn't. Struggling as they are its amazing that Mayer didn't just hire the right people for the job. It should seem obvious to someone that smart, that to properly design a new logo for such a company you need to hire people who are trained to do the job.
Every time I hear about the latest thing Marissa Mayer has done, I vacillate between "You go, girl!" and "Ugh, this is who we're lauding as someone breaking the glass ceiling in her industry??" The logo thing feels almost like a publicity stunt made to highlight her priority to reduce spending, like the banning telecommuting thing, but this one completely backfired (at least in our community). Especially as a board member for such organizations as the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I would think she should know that she cannot be all things to all people, and the brand of your company is a really important thing.
One of the problems with the creation of this logo comes back to an idea that artists and designers do not have valuable skills. Marissa Mayer clearly has no understanding of design, but apparently was under the impression that it does not require an actual human designer to be involved in this process. People are responding poorly to the new logo design because it does not feel right to look at. The lack of design in it invokes a negative emotional response. And her choice to produce a logo without a designer is like her saying that she does not believe artists are relevant to the real world.
A couple of years ago, Gap changed their logo and there was a lot of negative feedback as a result in this case as well. Gap changed back to their old logo and hopefully Mayer will see that Yahoo's new logo should be replaced as well. Design, like anything else, requires someone who is appropriately trained in it.
Post a Comment