Aol. or Lol?

From Creativity

To coincide with its de-coupling from Time Warner and its shares being offered on the NYSE, AOL is unveiling a new logo. Designed by Wolff Olins, the new ID re-imagines AOL as Aol. (the period is part of the logo, not just an indicator that the sentence has ended, which it hasn't), and the lower case letters are designed to be viewed against a backdrop of different images.

Aol. describes its new logo as "a simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever-changing images. It's one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal."

AOL was an established brand with a recognizable mark, it was recognizable to most american consumers because of their early prominence as an internet service provider and expansive broadcast advertising budget for many years. Now, I understand the brands need for a new image, particularly with the separation from Time Warner and a very different business model than in the 90’s, but when your replacing an established mark, variety may be the spice of life, but it does not make for a consistent captivating brand image.

I can just hear the pitch for this now during the pitch, “Your brand and service offering offer unparalleled levels of customization for a wide variety of consumers, this mark allows us to really show Aol.’s diversity, and with a variety of background images we hope to resonate with a range of new consumers.” Blah, Blah, Blah, smoke and mirrors, and someone with an english degree explain the period to me, It’s not like America On Line is even a real sentence, well, I guess it does have a subject, a verb, and the verb is finite, but since when was advertising and communications copy run by the english department. I mean Whassup seemed to work well for Budweiser.

In my opinion, this really isn’t a mark at all, and I would bet dollars to donuts that most creative directors would look at the art director that brought them this scheme and ask if they really understood the concept of branding. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m all for innovation and breaking normal conventions, but when your trying to replace an established brand and image with a new one, consistency is key and I can’t even begin to wonder what this looks like in grayscale on a #10 envelope.

Hell it's not even that legible in some of these.