All of the twitters are dying down surrounding the updated logo release for GAP. (www.gap.com) Oh the outrage of it all. Everyone is saying that GAP learned a valuable lesson on crowd sourcing and they should have listened to their faithful brand followers.
There are a couple of things to note and this has nothing to do with the design of the new GAP logo. It has to do with how business utilize designers and how the executives of a company, in this case Gap, think they know how design works. The problem is making decisions by committee within a company. Rather than trusting a design or branding company to do their job. It is really not in the best interest to gather feedback from crowd-sourcing. This is the biggest committee of all. If the crowd doesnt understand the parameters of the design problem that needs to be solved.
The new Gap logo is, or was, awful. Let’s get that straight.
But we don’t need to reinvent branding or rebranding in the internet age. The problem lies with the companies performing the rebranding not being strong enough to stand up to the clients opinion. A client should also take note that they should get out of the way and trust the designers.
I blame the inner workings of the executives at Gap and their design firm who allowed them to sign off on the new logo. They made the decision to go with a terrible logo. How they arrived at the terrible logo is probably more the story than the actual logo itself.
It’s time for producers, executives, CEO’s and VP’s to get out of the way and let the designers they hire do their jobs.
