Once known for their stylish branding and commercials, the clothing
retailer has fallen behind the likes of Urban Outfitters and Abercrombie
and Fitch with their cool quotient in recent years. They made news last
week when they announced that they were changing their logo, only to
change their minds faster than John Kerry. There was a huge public
outcry and eventually the company announced that they were they were
changing it back. The whole episode reminds us of when Coke introduced
New Coke only to reintroduce Classic Coke. Either it was a very
expensive gaffe, or Gap brass is secretly laughing at the publicity ploy
of the new century.
It's fitting that the next Olympic Games will be held in London in 2012,
because the logo is no less a catastrophe than the cataclysm predicted
by the Mayans. It's hard to make sense of the logo itself, but what is
certain is that it's ugly. Graphic designers across the world have
universally lambasted the design.
You'd think that Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or some Tea Party tea-baggers
were behind this logo. It's conservative. "It's not technically bad, but
seriously underwhelming, and clearly trying to replicate the success of
the Obama brand," says Miami graphic designer Sarah Rusin.
Always suffering from Coke envy has its ill effects. Pepsi tinkers with
its logo and brand more often than is advisable, and often ends up the
butt of jokes. See what we mean?
Apple ditched the old iTunes icon/logo with a CD behind the music note
earlier this year, and though it was time for a new design the new one
is pretty lame. "It almost makes sense, no one buys CDs anymore, so why
keep it on the icon," says Rusin. "But it does have a mess of bevels,
drop shadows and gradients, which makes it easy to criticize." We don't
know what all that means, but it sure sounds bad.
