In the first week of October, retail giant Gap aired it’s new logo on the web. Ditching it’s iconic serif text on a blue box in favour of a smaller gradient-filled blue box overlapped by a large, simple Helvetica bold logotype.
Within 7 days, the logo had been slated so much by web forums and social media feeds it was scrapped. At the time of writing, Gap seem undecided as to what to do next, but may be reverting to their 20-year old original.
The U-turn is interesting, and is another milestone in the impact social media is having on marketing. Every brand, is wise to get as much feedback from it’s audience as possible, and Facebook, Twitter, etc are the obvious routes to road-test any product or concept before it goes live. But Gap learnt the hard-way that internet critics are very vocal, with the negative boos disproportionally sounding out the positive cheers, and that the very nature of social media means that once a tide has turned, public opinion is easily swayed.
Some marketing experts say the whole thing is a PR-stunt, with Gap trying to show that it not only listens to it’s customers but dances to their tune. I doubt this is the case, in fact I think that the radical change in styling of the logo was down to Gap struggling with it’s own identity as a brand.
Helvetica logotypes are everywhere. The classic simplicity has always made it the designers chosen typeface. In the 1990s, Helvetica popped up everywhere usually in an ultralight, lower-case form that echoed the penchant for minimalism of that decade. Gap was no exception, with the font used in it’s campaigns, alongside the solid square serif logo.
Then, post-millenium, Gap (and Helvetica) fell slightly out of fashion.The 1990s had been an era of minimalism and utilitarianism, so Gap with it’s plain t-shirts and khaki cargo pants had thrived, but in the turn of the century, retailers like Hennes and Primark begun to encroach on Gaps gap as of affordable cool, with products that were more popular, cheaper and in Europe took their inspiration from either side of the Atlantic. In a decade of anti-Americanism, Gap with it’s US ethos, couldn’t do this.
In recent years, there’s been a massive rise in utilitarian fashion brands that compete for Gaps customers. Brands like Bench, GoiGoi and Superdry have been in favour in recent years and all share a common branding theme that’s splashed across their products.: Heavy Helvetica, sentence-case logotypes. Helvetica (with a capital H) has had a return to the high street and it’s been big and bold.
And so we find the reasons for Gap’s major restyle of it’s logo. Caught between cheaper brands and more stylish ones, Gap is struggling to find it’s, gap.
Bringing in the chunky sans serif is their way of showing it can sit alongside the popular brands and keeping the blue square implies it’s trying to retain it’s own heritage.
Caving in under a wave of web-based public opinion is probably not the best way to win support from a discerning market. We want our fashion brands to be strong and dictating not asking us our opinion and going back to the drawing board we don’t like something.
Gap should have had the courage to stand by the logo, whatever the initial reaction was, safe in the knowledge it’s branding agency had already done it’s homework, and it’s designers had found a solution that represented the current outlook of the business.
If brands start being threatened by social media instead of advised by it, then originality, creativity and progress will be stifled. Design decisions cannot be made by committee, and they definitely can’t be made be crowds. Gap had it’s chance to stand up to the criticism, shame it was only it’s typeface that was bold.