Uber's Design Meltdown (opens in new tab)

At least in Seattle they now have colored bars that identify the car (you can select the color in the app, it's an LED strip).

http://mashable.com/2015/12/03/uber-spot-light-color-code/

The problem with just having a logo is in many places there are lots of very similar Ubers (oh hey my Prius is here!).

This is why I believe that this rebranding is one of the worst since New Coke. It not only fails to help the brand. It actively hurts it.

When you're trying to create a logo or brand, the first step in the process is to determine the "values" that are associated with a brand.

These values force a company to ask what are we selling?

Is a Corvette dealer selling you fuming gasoline, smudged glass, and cold steel? No, they're selling the open road. Sun on your arms, with the wind sweeping through your hair. The dealer isn't just selling an engine, some wheels, and a few chairs.

What they're selling, what they're really selling, is freedom.

Now look at the most recent U-logo for both Apple and Android:

http://defiantly.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/uber-logo.pn...

What does it communicate?

First, it conveys identity. It shows me a high-contrast single symbol (U) that strongly identifies the brand. A customer can see that symbol a handful of times and come to instantly make a very strong connection to the company.

Second, this logo immediately conveys the brand's values. Somehow I can tell that this is a premium product, probably in the "aspirational luxury" category: a treat for the middle class, a luxury for the haute middle class, and a necessity for the upper class.

Why does the brain automatically know this? Because the logo draws on a language of visual metaphors that are embedded in our culture, and thus our advertising. See all the following logos:

Gucci:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-F6tpNhNYBdo/Usa7AjaHphI/AAAAAAAAC...

Versace:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/1322717097_versace_logo.j...

Uber:

http://defiantly.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/uber-logo.pn...

High contrast black and white is a symbol for accessible luxury. The U renders it nearly universally recognizable. I understand the desire to tweak the branding, given the more market-diverse offerings, but throwing out what is quite close to a perfect brand for this nonsense reeks of corporate mismanagement.

Sorry Uber. I'm glad I turned you guys down.

I thought it was an old Chinese coin :(

Well, in Brazil the Uber cars dont have any sticker. You recognize them by model and license

I've got this weird feeling that ad was placed by a bad fuzzy-match algo.

"Uber", "uBar", yeah sure, why not? run the ad.

It's horrible for the reader and for exactly that reason it's probably making more money.

Tangential question. Anybody here tried uBar? How is it?

Damn, the ads have devolved and are harder to block. At least don't show the ad to non-macs.

Yeah, I think that was the bit where, when animated, the logo works. But rarely will a sticker on a car be animated, at least in this decade.

That said, designers often over-worry about logos initially. If you put enough marketing power behind it and the company is still on a growth curve, the logo will eventually become associated with the brand and it wont matter whether it was obviously a 'U', a Chinese coin or a ghost ;)

EDIT: The question now is, is uber on such a growth curve that they can still get away with this. My gut says 'no,' but only time will tell.

Indeed. This was my seconds thought, immediately following "Why are they using an inverted C for their logo?!"

I don't agree that looks like a U, but also they explicitly said they didn't want their brand to be based on an English letter.

Satsified? No. Made less obviously bad? Perhaps.

The Wired piece said they decided on that but then turned it sideways after seeing the State Bank of India logo.

I think they avoided that because of the state bank of india logo. Wired story mentioned that too.

Rotated, it appears to me like looking down someone's open mouth. Not a pleasant association at all.

Yeah. That's a bad idea. ...when you see it

... the logo is unrecognizable.

Apple's logo? Looks like an apple.

Exxon's logo? Says Exxon.

Google's logo? Says Google.

Shell's logo? Is a shell.

Chevron's logo? Has a chevron in it.

The first time I saw Uber's new logo, I said "wow, I have no idea what this is," which is absolutely the opposite thing you want a customer to think. You might say "oh, but it says Uber right underneath the icon on my phone." Which is accurate, but many customers wouldn't recognize the logo on the car without additional text, which COMPLETELY misses the point of having a logo in the first place.

Successful in what regard? Financially? artistically? It was completed? A critical internet community criticized it? Successful is a very broad term. You may be correct, i just have no way to prove you are

How do you define success here? Genuinely curious.

I think the new Uber typography is fine, but I really don't know how you defend that icon.

"Clickbait" is overused around here.

It's the title of a blog piece. There are no rules that it's required to be hyper-descriptive. Nobody is being deceptive. Did you really think the article related to some sort of nuclear meltdown and Uber?

Yeah, I think it was supposed to be a pun referencing the "atom" inspiration for the design (not that I disagree).

You mean brand schizophrenia where the lead designers leave your company after you destroy their integrity?

"Atomic meltdown" does sound overwrought, so we replaced "atomic" with "design" in the title. If someone suggests a better title we can change it again.

Its a meltdown of brand identity that occurred during the redesign.

I wouldn't really call what happened here "design".

The implied - not sure it was ever stated - aspect of their branding was that the experience was about YOU. Getting the car, handling payment, not having to worry about all the details makes YOUR life easier. Their deals with Hilton and United to have a car ready whenever and wherever furthered that in my mind.

So while the "U" meant "Uber" I always interpreted it a little bit differently.

No clue what the backwards C means.

They will soon declare that it's a "symbol" and be henceforth known as "The company formerly known as Uber".

They are expanding into new markets, different customers. That goes a long way to explaining the increased complexity of pricing and options.

Especially when a serious number of your customers are drunk when they are looking for your services....

I keep the Uber app in a travel folder on my iPhone. The small form of the new logo looked a lot like an app that was in the process of updating. For a few days I thought some app was stuck updating, and was about to uninstall it, until I realized what it was.

Yes I had no idea it changed. I went to get an Uber the other night and after 10 minutes of looking for the app I gave up and went back in the house. I left my glasses at work and was frustrated.

I'd have thought it would result in a fractional but statistically significant drop in use in the short term. At Uber scale, that's probably not pocket money, and probably does involve someone in analytics having a very awkward conversation with Kalanick.

Touch icon layouts aren't designed to encourage you to read the text below before selecting an app. If the big "U" isn't there but the big "lyft" still is, they've probably just lost a ride.

The logo of the app looks like a Chinese bank logo. A lot of Chinese - and to a certain point Vietnamese - banks have logos with square inside a circle, since that's how Chinese money used to look like.

When Uber updated, I wondered what is that Chinese bank app doing on my Android.

OP likes it too, unless he's being sarcastic. Really, it's hard to tell sometimes.

> The bit makes for a great favicon, and reminds us of the great work of early modernist painters. Left, Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915. Right, Uber Favicon, 2016.

> Of all the brands based on squares, Uber's is the most exciting.

Many people think the term arose because of the dominance of French in diplomatic circles, but I t's actually quite apropos; "lingua franca" is an early medieval term that essentially translates to "language of the Western Europeans" ("Franca" in this context is not modern France, but a term for historical Germany -- everything north of modern Spain, essentially). In the day, lingua franca was a patois consisting of bits of various languages that all traders in the region knew and could communicate in, though it was too mutable to be a stable language as such. Not unlike English, actually!

It helps that English adapts to the current zeitgeist relatively fast and can kind of act as an ombudsman for the spreading of news concepts and ideas to other languages.

True, it does seem like a contradictory sentence. Here, I'll fix it: "English is the common language of the world." :)

Just as software wizards are in other contexts, that would be useful for a new user, but frustrating for a power user who knows exactly what they want and the quickest way to select it.

Yeah, it's really not easy to get there. But once you have all the options in your head it's really the fastest way to get what you want as it is. If you don't want to choose just take what they have chosen as the default option and base your Uber experience on that. Different cities offer different of these options and I found that without special requirements the default option is usually the most reasonable one for "getting there fast, cheap and not too uncomfortably"

This is a common problem in marketing. Given marketing unseen soft skills it's common for people to feel they can be great contributors. I've literally had an occasion when a exec waited til marketing left the building and held design/programming staff back the night before a launch to implement his messaging, look and feel which had been previously discussed and rejected. And no joke, he had the gall to criticise the marketing team for the launch when it didn't get the traction expected. My jaw still hits the ground someone can be like this.

While not normally as bad as that example, executive input is acceptable at some companies, typically from those people we've all seen whose confidence clearly outweighs their ability (though to be fair some people give great commentary too). In areas like brand its very difficult to 'prove' bad suggestions right or wrong as measuring impact/result is difficult given so many variables, and for what you can measure you'd have to run the alternate to truly know results, which is unrealistic. The other one I see is sales management get promoted to run marketing as many operations/finance leadership dont realise how different the skillsets are, assuming 'selling is selling'.

For this, life is a bit easier in the performance marketing channels vs brand type channels. I've found the best solution is, rather than fight the political fight to keep them out, simply build what they want (assuming digital campaigns) and A/B test their campaign version. Afterwards be sure to present the results at a suitably high/wide level. Its win/win as if they contribute good work the company benefits from their insight which is great. And if they are the manager sticking their untalented nose in repeatedly, after several presentations (all done in a genuinely friendly manner) the bad internal press tends to keep them quiet, at least for a while.

And to be fair, some marketing people are not the best themselves and probably deserve micro-management...

"For me, I’m using our recent successes as a chance to take time off to rest, reflect, and recharge. I miss being there for my kids and I’m making a decision that enables that. Soon, I’ll be ready to take up the next challenge and it’s going to be great."

What part of that implies that he left because of the redesign ?.

Yes. The author obviously has an axe to grind, implying Kalanick is an "elitist", "drooling idiot" who picked the logo "impulsively", "doesn't know what his own intentions are", and "shouldn't be in charge of Uber's brand" (all actual quotes from the article).

Flagged this submission for gratuitous negativity and for being a hit piece on Uber and some of Uber's employees, disguised as design critique.

it's the same everywhere for designers; they study, work, and spend their lives designing but at the end of the day are subject to the whims of a business unit or product owner. it doesn't take any training or thought at all to know what you like or dislike.

but i agree with the author, this fiasco and even more so, the yahoo! logo redesign my mayer are just colossal crap theater. i actually don't know what's worse, doing it over a weekend and crowing about it or taking 18 months and then crowing about it.

I don't know why you would comment something so "simple" (if you actually read the article, if you didn't then I'm wasting our time) when the author clearly (albeit sarcastically) points out that "Obviously designers have no right to comment unless they were in the room with the Uber designers during the design process". Surely you should come up with a stronger rebuttal than simply paraphrasing _his_ sarcastic comment?

According to https://blog.lastpass.com/2016/02/meet-the-new-lastpass-logo... they had to come up with a new logo due to "an unanticipated trademark lawsuit, filed early last year".

>that's a cursor at the end of what are supposed to be three hidden characters

That was immediately obvious to me. I'm neither a designer, nor have I ever actually used their product. I think it's an excellent logo because it is instantly evocative of how you use their product.

There may be some snark, but it's entirely appropriate. I think it's a piece written for designers, who regularly have to deal with micromanagement from talentless, egotistical people. Except in Uber's case, things were ten times worse than usual.

This comment reads like the author has a personal reflexive defensiveness for Uber, it makes it hard for me to accept your opinions.

Indeed, I'm not a massive fan of Uber, but the continual snark against both Uber and Wired in the piece made me dubious about taking the critique seriously.

It's also not a theme that is unique to their brand at all. So you connect cyber and meatspace, ok, well what tech company in the last 20 years couldn't say that?

A turd would be more recognizable.

The problem is not the brand, that's just a symptom of a far worse problem.

Did you skim read? It introduces him as:

"One can be sure that Uber's Design Director, Shalin Amin".

This logo shall henceforth be known as the "anal fissure".

Use the Uber redesign as the standard of poor redesign and you won't go far wrong.

Fun fact about those leads: the clips that hold the leads to the electrode pads are of many different specifications, i think specific to the manufacturer, so you can't change the lead (and so the monitor) attached to a patient without replacing the pads.

Hence my slightly comical experience of sitting in an ambulance during a transfer from my local accident and emergency department to a specialist cardiac hospital, topless, having my electrodes replaced, then going through the same procedure after the ten-minute drive to the destination!

If someone could disrupt that, that would be great, thanks.

Huh, haven't noticed that yet. This re-brand is so thoroughly weird in every way you could imagine. The original Uber site that I remember had a mark of professionalism and gave me a luxury limo vibe (though I knew it was just people's cars). This site has a more bubbly, AirBnB vibe, for better or worse I guess. I personally thought the professional vibe was better for their product.

It's not insignficant. For one, the app icon looks completely different now. I had thought for a moment that I had uninstalled uber inadvertently before remembering their brand redesign in the tech press. For those not following the tech press, they probably had a harder time figuring out how to call an uber app.

They destroyed their brand in one fell swoop their new logo is entirely new. The good news for Uber is though that they are so essential and ubiquitous there's no danger of this impacting their business.