If you weren’t online this last week, you missed it. Last Monday, Gap revealed it’s new logo — and… it was BAD. The internet was booming with hate speech about this branding monstrostity.
On Thursday, Gap tried to defend it’s decision — and then announced it’s plan to crowd-source a solution that might save them from the huge blunder they made. As if that eyesore of a logo wasn’t offensive enough, now the design community was being asked to bail them out?
Exactly one week after the logo was unveiled, it’s gone. Yesterday’s press release announced that they would be returning to the classic blue box logo and that they had no plans to crowd-source a new one.
This whole fiasco has been incredible! Last Monday it was all anyone was talking about! This weekend, friends of mine who have absolutely zero interest in design were talking about how dreadful the new mark was! You thought the backlash to the Tropicana rebrand was bad? This was unlike anything I have seen… some of the comments on the Gap Facebook page were almost violent with RAGE about the design.
I’m not going to bother asking what you thought of the new mark… you hated it! But man… what do you think of how people basically used the power of the internet to shame away a logo in only one weeks time? Also, does anyone know who designed this logo?
Crowdshaming FTW! . BTW, the new (now old) logo was designed– as I understand it– by Laird + Partners. However, I must give credit to Graham (Smith)/@imjustcreative for noting it on his blog (I’m sure other folks have mentioned it as well, but he;s the first that came to mind).
As a community we should be proud. We’ve been heard twice during this whole event. Welcome to the internet age, Gap. You can’t hide from negative criticism and you can’t try to turn around and take advantage of people by asking them to create speculative work because you fucked up.
The Gap deserved every bit of bile that was spewed at them.