THE LOGO CONSPIRACY

Either there's something in the water, aliens who like to feast on tasty little designer brains, or millions and millions of dollars being thrown at the ultimate April Fool's prank.

Rebranding is happening everywhere it seems, but most of it is taking a thousand paces backward for both design and the clients involved. Tropicana dropped a huge bomb when they swapped out their classic straw-in-the-orange for a big glass of OJ: sales dropped because their faithful customers couldn't find the Tropicana. All they saw was a shelf full of generic store brand juice. Both designers and non-designers complained, and I can't blame them, either.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any company that's made a powerful leap forward with rebranding recently. Coca-Cola's simplification was a pretty good one, but that's about all I got. Anybody who has an example of an "ah-ha" rebrand should let me know, because I'm beginning to lose faith over here.

8 Rules of the Rebrand:

1. Friendly company name + Generic sans serif = Irony
Blimpie's old logo wasn't the greatest thing in the world, I will say that. But the name is Blimpie, for God's sake. It's going to sound fun no matter what you do to it, so you might as well embrace that fact. Instead, the sans-serif trend was put into motion and killed the whole vibe. Do not want.

2. A pointless swoosh does not make a (good) difference.
Nothing is different from the old logo, with the exception of the color and a boomerang (?). The swoosh serves no purpose, aesthetically or conceptually. Unless you're Nike or have a damn good reason to swooshify something, don't.

3. Live trace is never the answer.
The most confusing thing about this rebrand is the fact that it went in the opposite direction of the trend. "Simplify, simplify, simplify? No. We gave our in-house designer the week off and gave Jimmy access to the live-trace button. And now we have a new logo!" Sick. And won't this be more difficult to implement on signage? (Thanks to Stephen for bringing this one to my attention)

4. Communicate the message of your company.
Neither animal, nor planet. I have tried to see an abstracted bird's beak in the side-ways "M," but if that was an intentional move, it wasn't made obvious enough. Trendy (kind of?) but could have made use of a dynamic icon rather than this weird arrangement of type.

5. Don't make it look like Hell.
Literally. A swirling, spiraling pit to Hell.

6. There's nothing wrong with a classic.
When this one was posted on Brand New's website, one of the commenters posed a brilliant question: "Why does the smile have a herpes sore?"

If you want to make it more friendly, Kraft, round the edges some more. Bingo. This went from recognizable corporate brand to an awkward smirk. With herpes, I guess.

7. Never let your friend's cousin's high-school-freshman daughter design your logo.
I'm still trying to understand this. Just...follow the damn rule. My eyes hurt.

8. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Please.