The Gap Abandons Its New, ‘Modern, Sexy, Cool’ Logo

Last week, The Gap released a redesigned logo that looked like an design-school dropout’s take on the modern credit card. They said it was part of the transition from “classic, American design, to modern, sexy, cool.” (Bloomberg reports it was an attempt to win over “millenials,” which are young people, not apocalyptic Christians.) People didn’t like it.

The company first responded to the thousand or so angry Facebook commenters with the unconvincing claim that they were just “crowd-sourcing” ideas. Today, they caved and ditched the new look. As their president put it, “All roads were leading us back to the blue box.” It was like New Coke on warp speed: Coca-Cola’s famous 1985 re-branding failure took ten weeks to play out, while Tropicana’s 2009 attempt at switching logos took about a month to fizzle out. All hail the mob!

Gap Scraps New Logo After Online Backlash, Will Return to Blue Box Design [Bloomberg]
Gap abandons logo overhaul [FT]

The Gap Abandons Its New, ‘Modern, Sexy, Cool’ Logo