Gap, as you may know, surprised consumers recently by launching a new logo on their masthead of the Gap.com website. While Gap, secretly developed this new logo, and launched it with no warning the company got immediate feedback, most of which was not good feedback. The company eventually, a week later, changed their “more contemporary, modern expression” logo of black “Gap” type with a blue box behind that was offset back to the classic “blue box” that we’re all familiar with.
First, I would like to address that with the old logo, the company has/had a true identity; therefore, the consumer would not be familiar with a new logo after seeing the same one for so long. I believe that the old logo is timeless as well as simple. With the combination of those two, the logo is dynamic in a sense that it subtlety actually makes a larger impact than you realize, now, on with the new logo. Obviously, I am not a fan of the new logo that was created; I tend to agree with one comment that, “It looks like it cost $17 from an old Microsoft clip art gallery”. With that being said, from old to new, I can see what the company had in mind. With the clothing industry constantly changing, their clothes were evolving, and they felt that so should their brand. However, the follow-through of the graphic firm that so clumsily slapped this design together was terrible, as well as they really did no research on where the brand was heading, and how to develop a design that facilitated the style that the company was embarking upon.
With the unveiling of the horrendous design on the Gap.com website, the company’s viral feeds were inflicted like wildfire with comments and posts about how ugly the new look was, and rightfully so. As a consumer of gap, myself, I was shocked that a company would even consider this after them having such an amazing identity already. Yet, as the old saying, “Out with the old and in with the new,” must have been on someone’s mind, the purpose was not in the right area. Come out with new clothes; just keep the same old logo that everyone is familiar with. The unveiling being a total bust, Gap executives concluded that they would revert back to the classic “blue box.” Not a moment too soon, I am afraid, as the holidays are right around the corner, and I could only imagine just how much work it would be to do such an overhaul to such a large company in this amount of time. Aside from this point, Gap also has been down in sales 4%, which is very minimal in the retail industry compared to several opposing brands. Should this strike up the thought of a new logo? Perhaps, but why? Would it make sense for a company to spend that amount of money to overhaul their company when they had a fall in sales like this? These are questions that only the executives of Gap could answer, and apparently they thought it would have been a great idea until all of the feedback was given.
This feedback leads me to my final point. Social networking programs such as twitter and facebook; have they hindered the rebranding of large companies in a sense that the feedback can be given and taken into consideration unlike beforehand where companies would overhaul their identity and people would just have to settle for it? Personally, I think that there are many companies out there that have tried this, and they were shot down as well. After doing some research, I found an article talking about other identity flops like Tropicana a few years ago, and how they also reverted after catching flack on facebook and twitter.
Concluding that personally the old logo is a better piece, not only in design quality, but because it has a certain long term relationship with the Gap customer as well as being timeless. The new logo was scrapped and not used, and for good reason, the general public hated it.
photo credits:
Fuller, Elizabeth. "New Gap Logo Withdrawn: The 'blue Box' Lives on - CSMonitor.com." The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com. The Christian Science Monitor, 12 Oct. 2010. Web. 25 Oct. 2010. <http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new-economy/2010/1012/New-Gap-logo-withdrawn-The-blue-box-lives-on>.
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