A logo is a significant element that is must to have by every brand, to make a long term recognition and association with customers. It is the visual representation of a brand that creates its unique and distinctive image in the market. Moreover, an emblem effectively communicates the core values and a unique selling point of a brand.
However, designing the perfect emblem that fits best with your company is not an easy task. And not every brand is so lucky to get it perfect for the first time. More often over time, they need to change it or redesign it according to their need.
Whereas usually it is considered that small companies make mistakes, but sometimes even huge brand also fail to make it right and have to face a backlash.
In this article, we will give you the examples of some successful companies that made designing blunders while redesigning their logos, and how they fixed it.
GAP
The gap is one of the well known retail brands with affordable prices and brand consistency. However, due to their popularity, they have to face severe criticism, when they made drastic changes in their emblem and suddenly revealed it.
Therefore, if you have good recognition, then you have to be cautious before introducing new and different logo.
Issue:
Back in 2010, when they revealed the new design of their company, people responded negatively to it and they have to face a backlash. The new design didn’t looked appealing to its customers and was very weak than the original one. Due to all this criticism, their sales were dropped.
Solution:
However, because of all this sudden reaction, the company decided to remove the new look and reverted back to their previous logo. This must have given a good lesson and learning to them as well as others too. Moreover, the company had to face a cost of $100 million, which was due to their decision to quickly buy logo and change it.
NASA
NASA is one of the well-recognized brands in the world. They have a lot of contributions in the progress of science and technology. Their meatball symbol is world known and has a lot of association with it. This symbol sums up everything about NASA and reflects them as an aeronautic company, but they also had to face criticism when they redesigned their logo.
Issue: In 1975, when NASA introduced the new design of their emblem, it was radically changed from original ‘meatball’ logo. They wanted to give more modern look in simple design, and even received an Award of Design Excellence (the Presidential Design Awards). But still, they had to face criticism from the public. The new-look only consisted of continuous red letters and lost all symbols relating to science. Due to which it was given the nickname as “Worm logo”.
Solution:
Then in 1992, they decided to revert to its original and old emblem and removed the new one from buildings and movies.
Google is the most well-known company in the world. Their services are used in almost every part of the world and we can’t imagine our lives without them. Moreover, apart from the significance for services, its logo is also counted on the list of the best logos in the world. However, they are not afraid of making changes and adjusting their logo. Then, where they did a mistake?
Issue:
Back in 1998, it was the era when the things were establishing and people were moving towards technologies. Therefore there weren’t many search engines, and when Google used exclamation mark at the end of their wordmark, so it was much similar to their competitor Yahoo. Even the resemblance was too visible.
Solution:
The resemblance was too visible that anyone can notice it easily. Then in 1999, after just a year, they removed that exclamation mark and made few changes in its colour and decreased the shadow effect from it.
Pepsi
Pepsi is a famous brand known for it carbohydrate drinks. Since its establishment, the company has changed its emblem many time, and fortunately got successful in achieving their desire look.
Issue:
Despite the successful rebranding history, in 2010, Pepsi’s made a significant change in its logo. There is a swirl in the middle of the spherical shape of the logo. The swirl separates the upper disk of the logo from the lower one.
In the new design, they rotated the circular icon to incorporate a “cheeky smile” into the design. However, the smile that they wanted to show was barely visible, and this redesigning was considered a disaster, which resulted in criticism from customers and branding experts. A lot of memes were also made on this design.
Well, even after all the fun and criticism, the company still decided to keep the design.
Ending Remarks
By looking at all these examples, you must have known the significance and impact of the logo on your business. No matter your company is small or big, you are thinking to buy a logo for the first time or redesigning it. You have to be extra careful about things and have to consider the reaction and preferences of customers before making any decision.
