I know it's quite an insignificant bit of enshittification but I still feel a bit miffed that every logo these days looks the same.
this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
210 points (95.7% liked)
Enshittification
4952 readers
393 users here now
What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Logos don't need to be readable. Logos need to be instantly, and unmistakably recognizable. McDonald's logo is the big yellow M. It's not "readable", because it's not a word. But, the entire world instantly recognizes the logo, regardless of whether they can read English.
I agree with OP, they're doing a disservice to themselves by simplifying their logos to plain text.
It also dilutes their branding when translated into different languages/writing scripts.
That McDonald's 'M' is instantly recognizable in every language, even languages that don't use Latin-derived letters.
But if your logo is plain text, how do you translate it into Cyrillic or Kanji? You either have to develop a completely new logo for those regions (hurting your worldwide recognizability) or you just roll with the English logo and have to deal with most of the locals seeing it as completely unintelligible.
Completely depends on the circumstance. Do logos of global icons like McDonald's, Apple or Volkswagen's need to be readable? No. Of course not because they're everywhere. Does your local electrician's logo need to be readable because it's literally just their family name? Yes. Yes, it absolutely needs to be readable.