Rebranding's Catch-22: New Gap Logo Brings Out Fans of the Old Logo
The online reaction from the design community has also been negative. Here's a representative sampling from Brand New:
I hate Helvetica in logos. It has the unique ability to make anything look pedestrian and, in this particular case, it makes Old Navy, Gap's low-end retail sister, look like a luxury brand by comparison.Tagline readers are familiar with this cycle by now: Logo redesign = wave of revulsion from design prigs.
This is the Catch-22 of brand management: If you want to find out how much latent consumer loyalty there is for your existing marque, launch a redesign. Unfortunately, you'll only elicit that affection when it's too late.
I didn't care about the Gap logo until yesterday, when it appeared on gap's web site, and I suspect you didn't either. But now, everyone does.
It appears to be a major step backwards and I can't understand why they changed it.A Welsh View:
It appears that GAP has either redesigned its logo using Word Art or held a competition in a primary school.Creative Intuition:
This is big branding mistake and clearly a display of corporate suits messing where they shouldn't.Fashioncopious:
This new Gap logo, ironicly, belongs more to financial institution than a clothing retailer.ISO50 launched a contest for alternative new designs, and within 24 hours received dozens of results, many of them obviously better than Gap's. I liked this one best. (Yes I know Gap isn't sportswear, but we're looking at typeface treatments, not what the words actually say.)
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