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
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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.
They probably all have the same consultancy groups making the same decisions. How dare they not conform to the market or the competition and stand out.
Kia went into a different direction but I still don't like it.
First time I saw it I thought it was a car manufacturer I've never seen
That's not "enshittification".
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.
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.
Logos don’t need to be readable.
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.
The logo is a way to present your brand. If the logo is bland, by extension you expect the brand to also be. And if the brand is expected to be bland, and if the company wants it and/or the profits still come, there is not reason forcing the company to try to be better.
Every CEO of every one of these shit merchants signed off on millions of dollars of expenditures to implement these rebrandings after being sold the idea by bullshit merchants.
That's why they deserve the big bucks I suppose.
That's really what rankles the most.
These fuckers paid millions for some designer to come up with "let's just type the name of the company in a super-boring font".
after being sold the idea by bullshit merchants.
You're giving media agencies too much credit. At some point many years ago simplicity and blandness became the thing every CEO was chasing after. Most designers are long ready to move on but board members and CEOs are too risk averse to try anything new. They all want what everyone else has.
Sans serif is the new deal.
If I ever start a business, I'm hiring the Rockstar North artist who did all the fake business logos that look like dick and balls from GTA. Start selling actual Giggle Cream.
Fashions are cyclical and ornamentation and busy-ness will become popular again someday.
busy-ness will become popular again someday.
I follow design trends and I've been told complexity and uniqueness will make a comeback for 5 years in a row. Will it come back someday? Sure but that day may be decades into the future for all I know. I believe it when I see it.
I hope you're right but I'm not sure it's really as set in stone as you make it sound.
Its a pretty well documented phenomena
Generation A does something a certain way
Generation B rejects their parents' taste, does the thing a different way
Generation C goes "there was some good stuff back in A's day, maybe we shouldn't write them off completely" and boom we're wearing bell bottoms in the 90s
I'm not sure it's really applicable here. What I'm seeing in this picture is not an evolution from "Style A" to "Style B", it's more like an evolution from lots of diverse logos to a completely uniform design across the industry. It's not an evolution from one style to another, but more like a consolidation from unique logos to sameness.
I have a hard time seeing them diversifying again. Maybe someone will change but then the others might just follow suite.
Until eventually enough execs get tired of it and demand busier logos because itll catch attention
We did bully Cracker Barrel to put the *ahem* white man back.
Cracker Barrel took the cracker and the barrel off of their sign. Didn't make sense.
ORDER CRACKER BARGLE?
Corporate logos undergo a vacillation between flat and aero every few decades. Just look at the Pepsi logo for example. Its part of the whole soulless pandering philosophy they have going on.
A lot of those real old logos were done with old tools like drafting tools, there's a hundreds different angles and such involved in each, very precise and mathematical almost. A lot of that stuff was being influenced by zines and stuff too, which aren't around as much anymore. The early days of desktop publishing had a lot of zines coming out and there was a lot of crazy experimentation with typography. I think maybe if those types of tools come back into vogue then yes. What will most likely happen is some AI chimera typefaces come next or something.
Pinterest, Burberry, and Rimowa all got major downgrades. A bunch of the others weren't very legible before or were kind of a jumbled/weird or also boring typeface (and so replacing with another boring typeface doesn't really matter)
Airbnb & Revolut looked like somebody did it with chatgpt on fiverr
Spotify looked goofy
Yves Saint Laurent was almost good but the kerning was atrocious
Berluti & balmain were just different boring fonts. Counterpoint: facebook, balenciaga were also just boring fonts but looked way better than the new boring font
At least they were unique, but they kinda sucked too
eBay was basically a captcha.
TBF, readability is a big plus for marketing, no?
Are these readable though, when everyone looks the same? At this point it's not really a recognizable logo as much as it's just a name written in text that you just have to read in order to know what the brand even is. You used to be able to visually recognize the brand based on the appearance of the logo, without even reading the name.
Yes, stop looking at logos that are designed by commitee.