Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Hey Yahoo! Take a Gander at These (Much Better) Crowdsourced Logos.

Yahoo debuted this new logo yesterday — the first redesign since 2009 (and not in 18 years, as the Silicon Valley Internet giant claimed) — and it was greeted with less-than-enthusiastic reviews.

While everyone will eventually get used to it, I suppose, very few thought the effort — apparently done in all-nighter style over a weekend by CEO Marissa Mayer and various Yahoo elves — was up to snuff.

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For example, as I noted about the logo, which is above:

The new logo is slimmer and neat, with the old serifs gone and minus the longtime whimsical tone. Stark and sensible — with an Optima font flavor and a whole lot of sharp edges (not very kid-friendly, IMHO) — it’s very much in keeping with CEO Marissa Mayer’s tidy design sensibilities.

In fact, the new Yahoo logo kind of looks like it is a little hungry all the time, like some supermodel in a Vogue magazine spread. The Logo wears Prada! I consider naming it Giselle (and I wonder if I should offer Giselle a cronut?).

And that was one of the nicer takes!

But, after getting an email tonight from DesignCrowd.com about what could have been, I am beginning to feel less charitable.

That’s because the global design crowdsourcing startup — with more than 130,000 designers — gave its community a challenge of coming up with something better.

And they did.

In fact, DesignCrowd.com, got 244 designs and paid the winner, from Romania, $200 for the victory. (It’s the first one, below.)

As you will see, it and others I added below are a vast improvement, and you can see more here.

Instead of saying, “Do not mess up my pristine furniture with your dirty hands, you kids!” — these logos are a whole lot more fun and loose, and suggest that messy handprints might happen on the site.

And they are also more whimsical, more accessible, more warm, more human, more interesting, more, well, just more. And, most definitely, they are a lot less Giselle.

Enjoy (I personally favor the second one for its interesting use of the famous exclamation point) the range of styles, some of which you will like and some of which you will not:

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When AllThingsD began, we told readers we were aiming to present a fusion of new-media timeliness and energy with old-media standards for quality and ethics. And we hope you agree that we’ve done that.

— Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, in their farewell D post