In the recent past there has been an increased amount of attention spent on logo design in general, but specifically, on redesigns of logos for popular brands. This week it's been The Gap who, after 20 years of time and money spent drilling their old logo into the collective consciousness, redesigned their iconic logo, leaving the most recognizable portion of as little more than a footnote...or perhaps more exactly, a superscript, and thus drew the ire of not only the design community, but also their customers.

What's unfolded in the few days since its introduction is an interesting mixture of corporate scrambling, excuse-making, and tap dancing. 

Sadly, Gap is not the only major brand to stumble blindly into a brand-damaging logo redesign lately, so much so that I've decided that, while the Gap logo is particularly egregious, it's the ubiquity of bad redesigns that are really troubling, and worthy of attention.

Off the top of my head I come up with:

1. United Airlines—Abandoned its Saul Bass designed logo when it merged with Continental in favor of adopting Continental's banal wireframe globe icon that could have just as easily come from a mid-90s clipart library.
2. YMCA—Ditched another 40+ year old design for one that looks like a good idea, plus a couple of tacked-on afterthoughts.
3. Seattle's Best Coffee—Abandoned their visuals that identified it as the anti-Starbucks for something that puts it visually somewhere between "The Buck" and the packaging for Target's in-house brand of diapers.

4. AT&T—Jettisoned their iconic Saul Bass designed logo for something that looks like the deathtar, really only works rendered in some sort of color or gradient, and inexplicably uses all lower case letters for an acronym. (AT&T is an acronym for American Telephone & Telegraph, you know.)

   1. Not long after they consolidated Cingular Wireless', destroying an estimated $5 Million in brand equity that was stored in "Jack" the icon.
5. UPS—Redesigned its Paul Rand designed logo for something more streamlined, more futuristic, and less charming.

There are lots more...and lots of smaller ones, and lots of rebrands that go really well and therefore go unnoticed. The other day OnStar announced a redesign, and it's a really good one (unless you're getting really sick of Gotham).

So, before I start my assault on redesigns, let me just say that I'm not one of those people who thinks logos should never change. In fact, I'm in favor of freshening things up when needed. Generally a well designed logo can stand for 10 years without need for intervention. It's a rare piece of work that stands for more than that, and an infinitesimal few that pass 20 or more without redesign...or failing.

When the time comes to refresh a logo, that refresh needs to be an evolutionary change, and not a revolutionary change. You want to bring in some fresh energy, not burn the old brand to the ground a rebuild from scratch. Ideally, the evolutionary logo redesign should reflect some change in the company as well, not just an exercise in trendy aesthetics.

The point of redesigning is to bring the logo up to speed with the reality of the brand it represents, or in the best cases, to reflect a direction the brand is headed, so that it the brand will grow into the new logo...like buying a pair of shoes for a small child.

When AT&T, UPS, and The YMCA rebranded, did I hate it? Yes. Do I understand that they're doing? Yes. Do I think the firms involved did a competent job with the unenviable job of redesigning revered classics? Sure. I still really hate the AT&T logo, and I still miss the old Paul Rand UPS logo...although I don't hate its replacement. What I mean is, even if I don't think it's as exciting or charming as the old one, at least it's strategic.

What I really have to ask in the case of Gap and Seattle's Best and United Airlines is "What problem did this solve?" and corollary, "What value did this provide?"

Really, that's what design is about; value. Many times, that value is very clearly defined, in that it solves a problem. For example: redesigning your logo to avoid confusion between your products and a competitor. That solves a clear problem. The value to solving that problem can be pretty easily divined. As does redesigning your logo because you change your name during a merger, or because you're focusing on a specific vertical market, or your company is no longer in the business you used to be in (ahem, AOL, we're talking to you).

Sometimes the value design provides is less well-defined. You may redesign your logo because you want to plant a flag in the future of your brand—to use it as a marker of where you're going. That also has value. That can actually have a LOT of value. It can be far more valuable than the easy-to-define, but because it's so hard to define, it's also harder to get clients to engage in.

My problem with these redesigns is that they waste not only time and money, in fees, brand equity and potentially lost sales, but they also waste opportunity. They waste the opportunity to develop something that's strategic AND charming, in the cases of AT&T and UPS, or something that is forward-looking AND organic to their brand, in the case of Seattle's Best and Gap.

So—designers and clients alike—consider the value you are creating. Waste as little as possible. Create as much as you can. If you do that you can be sure that, even if the public cries foul, they're just upset because you changed something they love. In time, if you did your job conscientiously, they'll come to love the new logo even more.