Gap Logo Disaster

Since Gap’s formation in 1969 the company had been a staple of American fashion and developed an identity for itself that stood out from the rest. 1986 saw the launch of the Gap logo we still see today, this branding has stood the test of time, and today it remains unique in style to the company, compared to other clothing company identities which can be immediately compared to similar counterparts. Strangely in the autumn of 2010 Gap launched a new logo, this took investors and customers by surprise, no one seemed aware of the decision to update the branding and change the staple of the Gap brand; the logo. A new logo was launched, one that featured a poor gradient swatch square hastily slapped together and a simple but terribly overused Helvetica typeface set in bold. This logo was immediately mocked by the design community and it wasn’t long before the whole world had caught on to what was viewed as the terrible new Gap logo. It was reported however that this new logo was merely a PR strategy to increase the media coverage of the Gap name across the globe as they brushed it off as a crowd sourcing project and soon reverted back to their previous logo. Lessons can be learnt from the would-be disaster at Gap, the new logo was estimated to have cost them over 100 million US dollars. Designers of the new Gap logo also did not consider that the main US competitor of Gap; American Apparel use Helvetica extensively throughout their advertising and branding guidelines. This gives cause to reason that the design was indeed a PR stunt from the company, as the consequences had the new style been rolled out would have been catastrophic.

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