There’s a reason why the Gap logo has been running strong for 20 years. After previewing a new logo slated for a holiday marketing campaign, Gap immediately heard and listened to the response from the online community and scrapped their new logo design. Gap wisely listened to the outcry from the hundreds of replies on Facebook saying the same exact thing that the new logo could have been basically designed by an elementary school kid.
Visually, both logos don't have many similarities. The only similarity that they share is the company logo and the ever present blue box. Everything else is changed, for example, the most glaring change would be the serif typeface to a bolder sans serif. They changed the company name from a slim white disposition to a black, heavy and enlarged type. The type of the company name itself can be a logotype, one can easily make an association with who the company is just by looking at the logo. The updated design looks clunky, unpolished and uninspired. The new logo shows that Gap is going to a completely new direction, which is definitely not good idea when you already have an established brand. Aesthetically, the old logo is refined, fully symmetrical with the lettering centered and surrounded by the dark blue box. On the other hand, the san serif logo is heavily left justified with the iconic dark blue box changed to a small fading blue afterthought at the end of Gap. From a design aspect, I believe that Gap did the right thing in staying with their 20 year old logo. At society’s rate of development, change is inevitable, it’s just that this change of logo isn’t the right one.
