The web’s most trafficked company has a new look. Yahoo, the search and online ad giant, has replaced its cartoonish and stylized logo with a new, serious replacement that retains the classic colour scheme but loses much of the sense of fun.
The new logo was unveiled earlier this week on Yahoo’s large network of news and search websites. The new logo replaces Yahoo’s old logo, which was rolled out on a variety of Yahoo services in 2009.
The company has explained that the new logo is designed to ‘stay true’ to its roots as a fun, whimsical company. Despite its more professional, ‘corporate’ look, the latest logo retains Yahoo’s purple colour scheme and famous exclamation point.
In order to choose its new corporate logo, the web giant stayed true to form by using an online voting system to work out which was the favourite of users. Users picked a logo run on the 10th day of the test, which became the current Yahoo logo.
While the logo has been praised by some for its professional take on Yahoo’s brand identity, it’s been criticised by web users for changing little and losing the ‘sense of fun’ that Yahoo’s previous logo displayed.
Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer, who has been with the company since mid-2012, explained the design choices in a recent Tumblr blog post. She explained the logo’s lack of straight lines was keeping with their impossibility in the human form.
She also noted the tilted exclamation point – a feature that’s been blasted by web users for its supposed inconsistency with the otherwise serious style of the other text. Mayer explained that it was tilted to ‘add a bit of whimsy.
The company, which is undergoing a major effort to restructure its operations and become a major web competitor to Google, Facebook, and other online leaders, has attracted a lot of attention from media and users after it acquired micro-blog service Tumblr.
