Last year abounded with many brilliant and missed concepts of brand identities. Yale University gave up with its famous Paul Rand’s logo in aim of simple Yale typeface. Hilton had his logo completely redesigned but didn’t avoid terrible mistake with adding unnecessary bevels. Kraft foods company decided to move with the times and completely changed their logo for carnival alike theme. Below you will find some of the best and worst logos of 2009. For more detailed information and more logo redesign check Brand New article and also visit David’s Airey’s personal blog about 10 most notable logos of 2009 . In a meantime, I encourage you to share your opinion and feelings about these new redesigns. Enjoy!

The Worst Logos Of 2009

Yale University

Design: Matthew Carter (Yale Typeface)
Release Date: September, 2009
As underconsideration.com aptly noticed, there is nothing formally wrong with the new logo, it’s a little bit sad that one of the most famous logos is to be forgotten. Personally, I believe new logo is far too simple and far too usual to represent that prestigious university like Yale.

Old Blackwater – New Xe

Well… if you haven’t heard about Blackwater company, you most probably wouldn’t recognise their new logo – which is ‘Xe’. Company in the very short time made two terrible marketing mistakes:
Mistake 1: It renamed corporation without leaving any name connection to help people recognise it
Mistake 2: It redesigned logo completely. Personally, I thought it was some kind of daughter company of Xerox..
Lesson to learn: You can’t completely deprive the company its old corporate identity’s look without prevousely notifying your customers about planned changes.

Wisconsin Department of Tourism

Design: Red Brown Klé
Release Date: March, 2009
Even least experienced designer can see and tell the difference between good combination of colours and bad one. Colours used in Wiskonsin logo are boring, not noticeable (unless in designer nightmares), lack of balance in composition, poor typeface and this human shape… This logo is my favourite for the winner of the worst logo of 2009.

Windows Messenger MSN

Release Date: November, 2009
Who doesn’t know MSN logo on the left? Strong, colourful, simple. Everything seemed fine with it, however Microsoft decided to follow their Bing’s logo trend and changed typeface for thinner and shorter. New butterfly looks quite ok, no shadows, same colours, fine gradients. Just this font ruins the effect of typographic decency. Such a shame Microsoft..

Kraft Foods, Redux

Release Date:
Phase 1: February, 2009
Phase 2: July, 2009
Company decided that however well known ‘race track’ Kraft logo wil remain on the consumer’s packaging, the new logo is to be adopted in other marketing tools such as Kraft’s website. This doesn’t seem to make sense, since the most important rule is to be consequent with company’s corporate identity.. Regarding new logo, well, it looks like company’s having all year carnival: random shapes, many colours, kind of childish. I don’t buy it. And you?

The Hilton Family

Design: Landor
Release Date: September, 2009
This concept COULD work if not these unnecessary, corny, ruining-everything, old-fashioned bevels. Whoever approved this concept, I would like to think he/she has sophisticated sense of humour..

Microsoft Browser: Bing

Design: Razorfish
Release Date: June, 2009

Microsoft maybe is the biggest and strongest professional corporation in the world but when it comes to releasing that kind of identity it seems a little bit confusing. As underconsideration.com informed: “All the letter forms were made from scratch.” Well, wrong wasted tons of money on design.

The Best Logos Of 2009

Avid

Very appropriate use of symbols as type. Without even reading the synopsis I could identify the industry.
Chris Austin

Design: The Brand Union
This logo is the beauty of itself. New logo has been composed of simple geometric shapes that every consumer and professional recognises as fundamental to the digital audio and video equipment/services. Definitely one of my favourite ever.

Euro 2012 Poland-Ukraine Logo

One of my favourite ‘blossom’ logo. In a smart way captures and represents colours of nations and it’s completely different from what we’ve seen presented before by UEFA. Nice playing with font shapes, good adjustment. Now just the question is if Poland and Ukraine will build stadiums on time so they people could actually see this logo.

Commerzbank

Design: Meta Design
Release Date: November, 2009

Very nice and clever combining the shapes and colours of two corporate identities into one – Commerzbank. Logo has been carefully planned and designed with attention to details. Look at the angle of the “K” which matches the angle of the icon.. pretty clever, huh?

Pfizer

Design: Siegel+Gale
Release Date: November, 2009

The changes in logo are small yet very visible. Blue gradient and different angle of the ellipse brings this logo back to life.

Below you can see how new logo works out on different backgrounds.

New York Public Library

Design: NYPL In-house Staff
Release Date: November, 2009

Who would think that NYPL in-house staff can be so creative? New design works well either in big or in small scale, is simplified yet distinctive. New logo definitely fits into perfect logo design: it’s memorable, scalable, works well on different surfaces and black/white colours.

City Of Melbourne

Design: Landor (Sydney)
Release Date: July, 2009

Old version…

… and completely redesigned new version

This logo surely can be called genius of the design. Geometrical form of M recalls strong image of the city.
As one of the readers of Brand New aptly summarised:

Even the parking tickets are exciting.
— Scott

And you? Have you seen any inspiring logos which you would classify as best of the last year? Share it wiph me!