Aol. rebranding fails
While preparing to massively lay off its employees, AOL (sorry, Aol.) announced a rebranding that looks… erm… Microsofpaintesque!
On the typographic side, I like the logo going lower case and taking some distance with the acronym, thus showing the company’s new orientation. The dot is also quite nice and acts as a connector with subdivisions of Aol. (Aol.music, Aol.whatever,…).
Unfortunatly, there are many chances that you won’t even notice the nice changes to the logo since it also features some horrible background images.
It is amazing that AOL was the first entry into the web that everyone knew about. There were free AOL trials on CD given out at Blockbuster (remember them), and other outlets.
It was a great way for people to bet on the web.
Then I don’t know what happened. I do know that a logo change has nothing to do with the brand.
Brand is about big strategies and great new value for existing customers and doing lagniappe…extra things to begin viral campaigns.
AOL…All About Listening…have they be listening to their customers?
This can’t be true.
Poor AOL…
I made this one of my three links on my daily design blog:
http://designthoughtfortheday.blogspot.com/
Ted
The text overlay is terrible. It looks some elementary…like something you’d do with a basic paint program. There’s almost no contrast so as to distinguish the letters. This is really bad.
really, this cant be true. are they kidding, will they launch that?
It’s totally true but I imagine it will be implemented much like Bing’s background.
While I agree that these images are, well, amateur looking, after seeing the video, it seems to fit a bit better.
http://corp.aol.com/news/2009/11/aols-new-brand-identity-comes-life-animation
Conigs, but branding should not be limited to a simple Youtube video. If it only works in that space, you’ve limited your potential. Nice find though.
Are they using clip-art or something?
Hip to be square…
Well, there’s always the possibility that they’re sending the message with the crummy clip art that they’re just folks, so to speak.
I thought it was a good thing that Aol. died on its ass??
I remember the days of trying to work out why the hell remnants of their programs were left on my computer years after uninstalling!
Doesn’t look like this rebrand will do much to create a resurgeance! Hopefully…
The Aol. rebrand was created by the same guy that did the London Olympic 2012 logo. The agency was Wolf Olins, but they commissioned Matt Pyke at Universal Everything – just as they did with London 2012.
http://www.wolffolins.com/aol.php