New Gap Logo Back to Square One

What a week for Gap. A brief timeline:

Oct. 6, 2010, morning

Gap rolls out a new logo. No one likes it, criticizing the choice of Helvetica and the poor, deluded, gradient mini square. (Visit the new Gap logo Twitter account and Co. Design’s interview with the new Gap logo for a few laughs.)

Oct. 6, 2010, 6:36 p.m.

Gap connects to consumers via Facebook, calling for crowd-sourced logos. “We’d like to see other ideas,” the page reads. No one likes that, either.

Oct. 11, 2010

Gap issues a press release announcing the good old blue square stays. “We’ve heard loud and clear that you don’t like the new logo,” Facebook Gap says. “Instead of crowd sourcing, we’re bringing back the Blue Box tonight.”

Though this design blunder has undoubtedly secured a place among New Coke and the 2009 Tropicana rebrand fail for Large Corporation Rebranding Blunders, there’s no reason a company as established as Gap won’t bounce back like 2% spandex in bootcut jeans. Plus, the design’s brief moment as the official Gap logo can be a new standard for unsightly:

“That website is Gap-logo-bad.”

“Maybe they should’ve crowd-sourced it.”