I have been in the market, recently, for a new Wacom tablet. My current tablet has served me well and it’s about time ti upgrade. So I’ve been scouring their site and noticed their new logo.
With the left being the old and the right being the new. While I really like the vibrancy of the colors and the modern font treatment of the word “Wacom”, I’m not sure I’m really digging the “clip-art” logo. The symbol looks like it took someone ten minutes on Illustrator who recently found out how to use the linear gradient fills. Badly.
After doing some research, I found out that the team that created the new Wacom logo is Wolff Olins. And looking through their portfolio, there are a bunch of campaigns that I really like. For example, the WaMu campaign. The (RED) campaign. Unilever’s new logo.
Obviously, I’m not very pleased with the new Wacom logo. But I really think it deserves better. Wacom is a product that’s used by serious designers everywhere. I’m sure the people of Wolff Olins have a bunch of Wacom tablets in their studio. I really think that they got some serious marketers that know how to sell the logos that are generated by the different teams within their studio because I also found out that Wolff Olins is also responsible for this campaign:
Now that is some serious sweet talking.
Popularity: 36% [?]
Maybe it’s too easy to criticize Wolff Olins after infamous London 2012 logo, but I really can’t see the point of Wacom’s rebranding.
There is a certain attempt to break away from corporate feel of previous logo, but result is too cheesy.
Typography is the best part of new logo, but I can’t call it neither exceptional nor outstanding - it is typical techy font that looks contemporary for this decade, but who knows how soon it will be dated?
The “color thing” is completely disgusting. It has awkward and static forms, and these gradients… I’m not a purist and I understand that with the rise of new media gradients and 3D-effects become more suitable for some identities, but the gradients here have unnatural look, like somebody’s first attempt after discovering gradient button in Photoshop or Illustrator.
I feel that WO designers had good intentions but failed to convey Wacom’s message.
Yury > I completely agree. My biggest gripe about the logo is that I didn’t feel instantly familiar with their products just by looking at their logo. I did not get a notion of how good it feels to use a Wacom tablet. It wasn’t fun, useful or attractive.
Apparently WO also made this brand presentation for them. But to me it seemed like total bullshit.
Thank you for presentation link. As you may notice, they even don’t exploit the potential of the new logo - its 3D nature. I thought that we would see the “color thing” rotating or stretching its “tentacles” - something more creative than just moving across the screen.
I guess most designer just hate this logo, for me the old logo was a seal of quality. It is like nintendo changing their logo, before it is too “corporate”
I totally agree. I loved the old logo, it did have that “quality seal of approval” look. Now it’s just like a retarded flower.