Brief Thoughts on the New Gap Logo
So if you haven't been paying attention, Gap has supposedly replaced their square blue logo with a newer, "PowerPoint inspired" Helvetica-laden design that has Paul Rand rolling in his grave.
Old and New Gap Logos (image courtesy of Huffington Post)
Twitter has been aflutter with 140-character (negative) reviews, major news outlets and blogs have picked up the story, and there's even a site that let's you make your own "Crap" logo. I'm sure that this story will only pick up steam tomorrow, so let me play the Devil's advocate:
I'm fairly sure that Gap, or the creative agency who handles Gap's marketing business, has just punked the entire Internet.
There. I said it. Why, Tyler, why? Fair question. Here's my list of reasons:
- No self-respecting CMO would allow his world-recognized brand to be damaged in this way.
- No self-respecting Art Director or Creative Director at an agency in charge of a rebrand of this magnitude would let that logo leave an agency.
- When a company of this magnitude rebrands, they do it totally, not half-assed. Anyone notice the favicon? It's still the old Gap logo. Gap's facebook page? Old logo. What about the corporate website? Oh look! Old logo too. In fact, the new logo only appears on the gap.com home page.
- Old Gap favicon
- This is a fashion brand. Fashion brands love to party. If the Gap was really launching new branding, wouldn't they throw a huge unveiling party?
Cmon everyone, wake up! This one is too easy. This is a brilliant digital marketing campaign. Take a brand that has been in decline and probably hasn't had a lot of conversation lately, do something terribly shocking with it, and generate buzz to get people talking about it. To the Don Draper who thought up this campaign, cheers! Well done, chap, well done. Gap was a perfect match for a campaign like this. The fashion-conscious folks were sure to get bent out of shape over an ugly logo. Results? Gap gets more mentions in the next 3 days that they did in the past 3 months and I'm sure that we'll see a traffic report in the future indicating a 3-5 day spike in traffic to gap.com and probably increased sales to match.
What do you think? Is the new Gap logo for real, or marketers looking to generate some buzz? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Update
Hey everyone! I realize it's been a while since I've posted and I'm sorry about that. I've been so busy with work, wedding planning and trying to get my Thesis done. But, I do have some good content on the way I promise!
Also, I realize that this blog theme was designed by someone else. Rest assured that I'm also working on that. The new blog design will be revealed with my new portfolio rollout sometime this summer! Stay tuned.
Apple, Adobe and the Future of Flash
Being the Apple fanboy and Flash developer that I am, I have been pretty tight-lipped about the Apple/Adobe Flash controversy. The topic has been vehemently debated among the technorati since the release of the iPad (the 7th grader in me still can't get over the horrible name choice for this device), with both camps presenting compelling arguments for or against the inclusion of Flash on the iPad/iPhone. As much as I love Flash, I can't fault Apple for not wanting it on the iPhone/iPad. It has a terrible track record on the Mac, and Adobe has either been incapable of or unwilling to fix the issues. Despite Flash's flaws, some users (myself included) still want it on their iPhones. I can't fault them either. Flash is deeply ingrained in web culture and can be beneficial when implemented properly. The question is: what does this clash of the Titans mean for users and design/development professionals when the dust settles?
My prediction is that there are going to be a lot of dissatisfied iPad customers, and here's why:
In the mind of the general public, the iPad will be seen as desktop/laptop replacement. As such, users will expect their iPad web browsing experience to be the same as it would be otherwise. Without Flash, this isn't possible.
B-I-N-G-O is now A-P-P-L-E
So... it's apparent by now that I'm a pretty big Apple FanBoy. That said, all the hype over tomorrow's huge announcement has been comical at best, pathetic at worst. I wanted to poke some fun at the pundits who have been making ridiculous claims in the weeks leading up to this event, so for most of the week I posted things like this to Twitter:
RUMOR: Mac tablet to run on Unicorn Blood and Cure Cancer!
Well my colleague and friend @LenKendall asked a provoking question today: "Has anyone created a Bingo card for tomorrow's Tablet event yet?"
What a GREAT idea!
Several people (NYT, David Weiss) beat me to it, but I wanted to post mine anyway. Enjoy!
Mac Tips
Quick Mac tips that I forgot to include in my previous posts:
When working on a file in nearly any program, CMD + Click on the icon in the title bar of the window and it will show you it's directory structure. Click on one of the folders below it to reveal it in Finder.
Similarly, CMD + R in iTunes will reveal the currently selected track in Finder.
PSD Twitter Template
In PR, Twitter is huge, thus I end up creating a lot of Twitter backgrounds.
To streamline the process as much as possible, I use a design template. @ChadEngle created a great template for designing backgrounds. But what if you need a mockup that includes tweets?
I've added to Chad's template to provide a fully customizable Twitter UI. You can edit the text as you like. Anything in pink, is a hyperlink and uses a Color Overlay. Change the style of one, copy the layer style and apply to all of the others. Duplicate the "Post" group to add more tweets to the timeline.
PSD Twitter Template
Hope this helps! Thanks Chad!
The Value of No
I recently read a post on the99percent (which is an outstanding site, by the way) titled "A New Kind of New Year's Resolution: Saying No", the crux of which is:
"...without understanding the importance of saying no ... [you will be] leading a busy life rather than disciplined life."
Which led me to think about the concept of "saying no" as a business practice. Applied in the broader context of the design/PR/marketing industry, this phrase translates to: "In failing to say no, we're doing busy work instead of providing value." In other words, we're doing a client a disservice by not saying no. Why, you ask?
Mac Tips for the Wannabe Power User (Part 2)
So you want to be a Mac power user? Well, you can't do it without the tips I listed in Part 1 of the series, and Part 2 is icing on the cake. Read below for more power user tips.
Mac Tips for the Wannabe Power User (Part 1)
A few friends and co-workers have asked me for some power user tips for their Macs. Let me say that I am flattered that they think of me as a power user. Let me also say that I'm giving away some really great tips here. It will be like me giving you cash, literally. So when you're done reading this post, look down at your CD drive, where I'm fairly certain you'll find a pile of cash pouring out of the slot... or not. There are more than several tips I plan to share, so I am going to break this up into a series. Part 1 below: