Yahoo! launches new logo and CEO Marissa Mayer gives an inside look on her Tumblr

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Yahoo! has finally launched their new logo and according to CEO Marissa Mayer’s Tumblr, it was time for a change, but not something they could do lightly.  Mayer also posted a video that shows all of the design notes during the process.

According to Mayer’s Tumblr they didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo.  Straight lines don’t exist in the human form and are extremely rare in nature, so the human touch in the logo is that all the lines and forms all have at least a slight curve. They preferred letters that had thicker and thinner strokes – conveying the subjective and editorial nature of some of what they do.

Serifs were a big part of the old logo.  They thought it felt wrong to give them up altogether so they went for a sans serif font with “scallops” on the ends of the letters. The existing logo felt like the iconic Yahoo yodel. They wanted to preserve that and do something playful with the OO’s.

They also wanted there to be a mathematical consistency to the logo, really pulling it together into one coherent mark. They toyed with lowercase and sentence case letters.  But, in the end, they felt the logo was most readable when it was all uppercase, especially on small screens.

Says Mayer:

“On a personal level, I love brands, logos, color, design, and, most of all, Adobe Illustrator.  I think it’s one of the most incredible software packages ever made.  I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous 🙂

So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team: Bob Stohrer, Marc DeBartolomeis, Russ Khaydarov, and our intern Max Ma.  We spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday designing the logo from start to finish, and we had a ton of fun weighing every minute detail.  

We knew we wanted a logo that reflected Yahoo – whimsical, yet sophisticated.  Modern and fresh, with a nod to our history.  Having a human touch, personal.  Proud.”