Institutions want/need to change their look every so often and with that in mind the University of California system has decided to update their logo from the one on the left to one on the right. Reviews so far? Ouch. The San Francisco Chronicle reports these reactions:
- [The logo would be appropriate for] “a shady online startup, not one of the top universities in the world.”
- “It is everything our school is against. Might as well have slapped a McDonald’s ‘M’ on top of it. It looks so corporate, and it looks cheap.”
- “The visual language is generic, commercial and utterly forgettable. It is a complete mismatch for the university’s history and reputation. (It) has no visual or conceptual gravitas.”
So what I want to know is: do people resist change because it’s new, or because it cheapens what came before it? Is modern always better? Is this a bold step into the future, or a bold step into…something else?
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