AOL's new clothes

Remember Compuserve? And Prodigy? Remember when Netscape's IPO blew the doors off the whole thing? Remember AOL?

Or how AOL made the Internet friendly and approachable to the masses who were barely comfortable with computers in the first place? Remember how it dominated the ISP market? Remember how you used to get 5 or 6 CDs a week from AOL? And how those CDs made great coasters? Remember the AOL tins that would show up in the mail? Remember how they just kind of stopped showing up?

Well, the next incarnation of former giant AOL is here, with a brand-spanking new logo. Days before being spun off from Time Warner (Dec. 9), there's a new identity for AOL and it's, well...ummmm...remarkable.

I'll let the pictures speak their thousands of words:



A few highlights of the criticism leveled on the new logo from a Fast Company article this morning on the subject:
"the logo will be plastered upon a number of elements ranging from a goldfish to what looks like clip art purchased from 1987."

"The name? It's now "Aol." (the period is theirs)."

"According to the press release on AOL's--ahem, I mean Aol.'s--site, it's a 'simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever-changing images.'"

"Besides, a lowercase "L" sure does look a heck of a lot like an uppercase "I." Just sayin'."

Reinventing/Relaunching a brand is always an adventure, whether it's a project borne of necessity, hubris, boredom or anything else.

And sure, it's easy to take potshots at something like this, so I'll refrain from finding everything that's wrong and simply say that it's an interesting approach, having the logo knocked out and "revealed by ever-changing images." I suppose they're getting at something about the fact that aol is kind of your window to all the wonders and magic and limitless boundaries of what can be done, found and experienced online.

Or maybe they're saying that AOL puts itself in between you and all those wonderful things, stamping itself on top of them so that you can't quite experience it all--only the portion that is visible and peeking out from behind AOL?

Whatever the case, I suppose it's nothing a massive media buy can't fix (please note the sarcasm intended).

Read the Fast Company Article.