The world is awash with brands and logos.  Most of them are adequate–they get the job done but aren’t terribly memorable.  Some are ugly as sin, some are downright incomprehensible, and some aren’t much more than clip art or the result of a typeface chosen at random from the default set in Windows XP.  But sometimes logos and brandmarks become more than just a pictogram–they actually become icons.  That is, they become instantly recognizable, and in many cases they endure for years and years; they become timeless.

Obviously in some cases (even amongst the logos I’ve posted above) there are periodic updates here and there–the “BMW” typeface has changed over the years, for example, and the Apple logo used to be in rainbow colors (and, interestingly, the IBM logo used to be solid), but these logos have never been radically altered from their original forms.

Sometimes, though, companies unintentionally (and sometimes very intentionally) wreck their longstanding corporate identity when they modify their logos, and I can’t quite figure out why.

In some cases, longstanding logos are simply modified poorly–this is what recently happened to the Pepsi logo, the AT&T globe, and the Xerox typesetting.

Motives for “rebranding” certainly vary; sometimes it’s necessary, especially when a company has made a drastic change and wants to reposition itself (see, for example, Sprint’s use of a black-on-bright yellow scheme that worked very well and differentiated it drastically from its competitors).  However, when companies have a perfectly well-established brand that is identifiable and iconic, as with these three, fiddling with the logos amounts to not much more than meddling.

The powers that be at Xerox, for example, felt that their identity was too “stodgy.” (Never mind that their red “X,” designed by Chermayeff & Geismar of NBC peacock fame, had been in use since 1961.)  To paraphrase a company press release, management apparently just wanted to “freshen” the brand.  Unfortunately, they ended up with something that looks similar to the Xbox 360 logo while also seeming completely random.  The biggest sin here is that their old red “X” was truly transcendent in many ways–it was a true visual metaphor, a graphic depiction of the conversion of digital information into the printed word.  While I won’t dispute that the Xerox wordmark could have used an update, choosing a lowercase sans-serif that looks like it belongs on a package of supermarket-brand cookies was a questionable choice.  Putting it alongside a logo that looks like it could either be a cough drop or a dog toy doesn’t help.

AT&T’s reasons for rebranding were similar.  It’s ironic to me that, on the day it became “the nation’s largest telecommunications company,” AT&T began using a new logo that allegedly illustrates “clarity and vision” as well as a “more welcoming and accessible image.”  Good thing the company issued a press release explaining these things, because when I think of corporate behemoths, words like “welcoming” and “clarity” don’t exactly spring to mind, especially when considering a logo that looks like the Death Star.

Pepsi’s reasons for rebranding are a bit more esoteric.  An Advertising Age article seems to indicate that the company saw a rebranding campaign as “an opportunity to bring humanity back” by allegedly deploying a series of similar logos that are supposed to look like “smiles” (no, I’m not making that up):

The new logo is a white band in the middle of Pepsi’s circle that loosely forms a series of smiles: A smile will characterize brand Pepsi, while a grin is used for Diet Pepsi and a laugh is used for Pepsi Max.

At the very least, Pepsi retained a circular shape for the logo as well as the red and blue colors, but the first time I ever saw the new logos and packaging I couldn’t help but think that the designer was a first-time user of Adobe Illustrator who simply gave up before finishing the job.  Advertising Age notes that Pepsi has made over its logo five times in the past 21 years, but I’d hasten to point out that these modifications were much smaller and generally involved shifting the position of the word “Pepsi;” the overall yin-yang shape of the logo has remained the same since 1962.  Unlike that original iconic design, I wager that these new skewed “smiles” will not be sticking around for 47 years.

Want an example of how bad rebranding can totally ruin a brand?  Take a look at this:

While it’s apparent that you’re looking at cartons of orange juice, what isn’t as readily apparent is that it’s Tropicana juice (which is–surprise!–a Pepsi product).  Granted, I would hardly call Tropicana’s old white cartons amazingly designed or gorgeous, but they were familiar and instantly recognizable.  These new cartons just look like supermarket generics–and not much more than that.

In many ways, these various revisions all seem to indicate that we’re in a kind of “3D era” with certain cues taken from the Swiss International style (e.g., the sans-serif fonts and adherence to grids).  The AT&T globe, the Xerox “ball,” and other logos like the recently updated UPS shield all employ shading and lighting techniques to simulate 3D surfaces.  It all adds a veneer of complexity that I personally feel is unneccessary.

In fact, because I’m starting to sound like a broken record, I’d like to point out one recent packaging redesign that I was delighted with.

If you aren’t a designer, and maybe even if you are, this one might have slipped under your radar.  Turner Duckworth is the agency responsible for stripping away all of the can’s extraneous elements and random textures, leaving only a clean iconic design that looks appealing and that will look fresh years from now.  Coca-Cola understood that its logo is timeless, its color palette is its signature and that its branding didn’t need a major overhaul–it just needed to be pared down to its purest form so that its message could be effectively communicated with minimal chatter.

If this entry has an overarching point, it’s simply that graphic design (especially branding and packaging work) can be extremely ephemeral.  It’s rare (but delightful) to find a logo or wordmark that hasn’t been changed simply because it doesn’t need to be changed.  Isn’t the point of a corporate identity to differentiate a company from everyone else?  I certainly think so, and that’s why it’s discouraging to see iconic logos discarded in favor of looks that grope at and emulate other “current” styles.  This is, in a sense, nothing more than succumbing to peer pressure, and the result is a bombardment of shiny faux-3D icons that all look the same–and that’s a true shame.