As you may have heard, last week Gap unveiled a new logo. To say it was not received well online would be a massive understatement. Within two days, the Twitter, Facebook and blogosphere scorn-storm was so loud that the retailer decided to invite people to submit their own design ideas. Another mistake. If there’s one thing designers hate more than bad design, it’s crowd-sourced bad design. By Monday, Ad Age had the scoop that the old blue box logo was back for good.
Despite the missteps, some praise the Gap for listening to its fans. Others criticize both its design taste and hasty retreat. Here’s the chatter on Gap’s backtrack.
Statement from Marka Hansen, president of Gap Brand, North America
“Last week, we moved quickly to address the feedback and began exploring how we could tap into all of the passion. Ultimately, we’ve learned just how much energy there is around our brand. All roads were leading us back to the blue box, so we’ve made the decision not to use the new logo on gap.com any further… We’ve learned a lot in this process. And we are clear that we did not go about this in the right way. We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community. This wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing… There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way.”
See kids? Bullying DOES work
Tim Nudd @ AdFreak
“The language there is almost too perfect. Perhaps this about-face–and not the now-ditched crowdsourcing idea–is what Gap had planned from the beginning. You know–get people to talk about you for a week, admit your “mistake” (in essence, underestimating how much people love you), and have the last laugh by appearing to listen to your customers and then giving them their precious logo back–a logo they never even knew they loved.”
Patrick Burgoyne @ Creative Review
“So what’s the lesson here? Has Gap shown an admirable ability to listen to its customers or has it merely bowed to mob rule–assuming that the whole thing wasn’t simply a giant PR stunt… And a word of sympathy too for Laird & Partners. Presumably they would have presented many different solutions. Gap chose this one. Now Laird has been hung out to dry. What a mess.”
Shane Richmond @ The London Telegraph
“Here’s one in the eye for Malcolm Gladwell. The New Yorker’s big-haired, big-brained and big-mouthed columnist argued in a recent article that ‘the revolution will not be Tweeted.’ Well now, Gap has gone back on its plans to revamp its logo, thanks to pressure from Twitter and Facebook. Oh yeah–social media brought the Wispa back, it got Rage Against the Machine to number one in the music charts and now it’s taken on the High Street. And Malcolm thinks social media can’t bring social change. Tsk tsk.”
Cliff Kuang @ Fast Company Design
“You gotta wonder: Are rebrandings–whether bold and visionary or downright terrible–impossible in the age of Twitter and Facebook? Will companies know when an outcry isn’t pointing to a terrible design, but rather just people refusing to embrace change? … Another big loser? Crowdsourcing in design, when done by a massive corporation. What big brand would ever try it, after such a high-profile defeat?”
Juli Weiner @ Vanity Fair
“The new Gap logo is survived by its antagonistic Twitter feed and a dozen “failed branding strategies” slide shows, in which it will be archived in the annals of history. To heaven, the Helvetica now ascends.”
