Actually I like it. Not to many redesigns of successful logos are well- successful. I like the colors and the big H. But in someway, it makes me think Irish Spring... kinda cosmetic.
Weak indeed. The reverse slant of the script is an identifiable part of the Holiday Inn brand. Without that it loses its equity.
Even as a small child I recall becoming distressed at radical changes in brand identity. Even though the name was spelled the same and I could read, too great a change in type or color could make the thing unrecognizable.
They would have been much better off to go even more retro, stripping sun icon (a logo in itself) and tweaking the letting a little bit. This new one looks like someone is trying to predict web 3.0 logos.
The reverse slant of the earlier script seems to imply a reaching-out, a gesture of hospitality to passersby. The forward slant of the new logo just looks .. fast. Maybe slick, but no implied hospitality or connection.
But then, perhaps the demographic has changed, and they are no longer interested in tourists or impulse guests. Maybe the ’slick and quick’ refers to pickups in the lounge?
Did I mention I found the earlier logos more endearing?
sorry, but what is wrong or huge mistake? why unnecessary rebrand? and what is wrong with Korean baking company? Indeed the demographic has changed (and their stock has declined 20 percent in 2007 — That’s a lot of money!).
I’m interested to see the rest of their new branding - TV commercials, pamphlets, etc. Who knows - maybe this logo will complement the image they want to convey.
Just looking at the logo, it somehow reminds me of the “ti” Treasure Island logo in Las Vegas (unfortunately changed right before pirates became cool again). To me it says “want to have the kind of fun you’d have at an expensive resort for cheap?”
I definitely prefer the original logo, and agree that they should have used a backslant on the text.
I think the biggest problem is that the new design is very trendy, and will look dated quickly. By stripping down the old logo the designers could have leveraged brand equity to create an almost timeless logo.
Oh you silly. There is nothing wrong with Korean Baking companies. Nothing AT ALL. That is not the point. The point is that the new logo rises only to the level of effectiveness typical of small to mid size asian business with limited interest in effectively communicating with an American audience.
An effective re-brand will resonate with customers and when it’s a well recognized brand it often needs to be an extension of previous branding efforts. The best you can say is that the new logo wipes the slate clean an creates the opportunity to create new associations. But if thats what you want you are better of re-naming the business as well. This ID is neither here nor there.
Whenever I see the (old) Holiday Inn logo I think to myself that the “I” looks like the cooler, strung-out cousin of the “L” in the Staples logo. This is too bad.
I think the old logo looks very much like a lot of the logos designed in the same period. It’s nice, but corporate not very strong. The new one is stronger but too modern (now). But we can’t judge a logo on it’s own. I like to see the graphic language around it.
The old logo hearkened back to the golden age of the road trip and the hospitality implied. The new logo by contrast is quite bland. My guess is that “corporate” in all it’s wisdom (said dripping with sarcasm) realized that a growing portion of its customer base is either too young to have taken a road trip in the family station wagon or not American and therefore wouldn’t get the visual references, hence the decision to “upgrade”.
I wish they had found a way to work the original “H” into the new logo. I pass a Holiday Inn on my way to my beach house and I always smile at the logo. I’ll drive straight by this sign and not even notice it’s a Holiday Inn.
Another aspect of the old design is the color. The old Green ( not shown in this post) is a very Starbucks looking color - by today’s associations anyway. Holiday inn may have decided that they needed to get out from under Starbuck’s massive marketing machine’s color space and colonize a new color space. ’Green’ as in ’eco’ may have been something they were attempting to imply too since it is fashionable to be seen as ’green’ now irrespective of any reality.
I must admit that I never liked the old Holiday inn logo or any of them. It just always looked tacky. The thing is, when you go to a Holiday Inn, the brand reflects the product accurately. What you see is what you get. There are no promises made, it is just a room. The new logo does not improve either the image or the product. It is fear branding. They are running scared and doing something in hopes things will improve. The economy is more the problem than the logo. The new logo sucks big time though. It is a non-brand and like a water soluble tattoo, will fade from memory with the wash. Pass them a green bar of Irish Spring Soap to hasten the passage to obscurity.
Like Chris, I never liked the old logo. The original to me looked awkward and tacky. The revision that Mark shows above is an improvement, but not great. The new H thing is to me shockingly bad, but then I’ve felt that way about a few big corporations revisions. If this is how they make decisions on their visual face to the world, I wonder about their other decisions...
“The thing is, when you go to a Holiday Inn, the brand reflects the product accurately. What you see is what you get. There are no promises made, it is just a room.”
That’s the opposite of what the original logo stood for. In the USA of the ’50s there were no expressways, only highways. And there was no consistency for lodging on any of the routes. A very hardworking and smart man from my corner of the globe got frustrated after a long car trip with his family by this lack of reliable, consistent delivery of lodging services. So he created Holiday Inns.
The man was Kemmons Wilson and his Holiday Inns delivered a consistent promise. A person could travel from coast to coast or border to border and know exactly what they could expect with a stay at a Holiday Inns hotel. It was a new idea and the right thing at the right time. Car travel was beginning to grow exponentially and the national expressway system was just on the horizon.
The company did very well under Wilson’s leadership. But he retired in 1979 and the company and its logo started getting mucked up since then. That’s when the promise started to die. Since the mid-80s the company has been under the control of various big investment groups. This most recent tweak of the logo removes the last bit of that emotional connection that the brand represented. I honestly don’t know why they bothered to keep the name because there is nothing of the original company or brand promise left.
As to the original sign, based on my casual interest in it over the years, I’ve asked many questions and heard that the founders wife, Dorothy, sketched it out and took it to one of the local sign shops for refinement. These signs were discontinued because of the big expense in maintaining them. That’s a classic, yet stupid, “it-looks-good-on-paper” decision. The signs were far less expensive and a better branding investment than all of the TV and print advertising the company buys.
Awkward and tacky? The logo and sign are classic 1950s Americana. So maybe it is awkward and tacky, but it’s a fine and beautiful representation of the era it came from. Maybe it’s like another awkward and tacky brand from around here during the 1950s, a guy named Elvis Presley.
From the first moment I saw it, which was in the ’50s, I thought it looked awkward, and I still do. Now I’d say it looks amateurish, which apparently it was. You can have a great company with a bad logo, but it’s still a bad logo. There are great 50’s designs of all kinds, including type and logos, but to this old pair of eyes, the Holiday Inn logo isn’t one of them.
Incidentally, the fact the Chris and I grew up in the ’50 probably means we are less impressed by the ’retro’ vibe of the design. It ain’t retro to us, just old.
I can agree with awkward, tacky, amateurish. But I have to disagree with it being a bad logo. It was unique, distinctive and had lots of character. I’ve been traveling a lot lately and have gotten lost twice trying to find the hotel where I was due to stay. The new hotel signs are boring, bland and blend in with every other sign on the road. But you couldn’t miss those Holiday Inn signs, just like you couldn’t miss the big McDonalds arches or the Shoney’s Big Boy. They worked. They worked very well for what they were intended to do.
This new version is much more refined. But it might as well be a logo for a soap, a soft drink, a landscape company or nearly anything else. It’s boring, not unique, looks just like a million others, and therefore a very well drafted yet bad logo. It does smell good though.
Have they started putting commercial logos up on exit ramps in the US? In Canada, you will see them, usually a mile before the exit, with generic signs for gas and lodging, but lately there are ones for commercial places, like Macdonalds. This new logo would work well in such places, once it gets engrained into our memories.
We have those signs, too Don. But the quality of the printing leaves a lot to be desired, so while the text might work, I’m pretty sure that the logomark will look weird. Of course, some states let business put their owns signs on the highway, so in those states Holiday Inn can spend whatever it takes to get a working sign made.
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26.Oct.2007 2.19pm
Actually I like it. Not to many redesigns of successful logos are well- successful. I like the colors and the big H. But in someway, it makes me think Irish Spring... kinda cosmetic.
As in:
http://www.fontshop.com/features/newsletters/sep2006_a/
Mikey :-)
26.Oct.2007 2.35pm
It’s tough to use green these days without unintendedly implying something.
26.Oct.2007 2.42pm
Funny—the “before” logo is one they haven’t used in years. Here’s the more recent one:
26.Oct.2007 2.42pm
(The old one will always be my favorite.)
26.Oct.2007 2.43pm
Indeed, Mark! Another weak, unnecessary rebrand.
26.Oct.2007 4.48pm
Weak indeed. The reverse slant of the script is an identifiable part of the Holiday Inn brand. Without that it loses its equity.
Even as a small child I recall becoming distressed at radical changes in brand identity. Even though the name was spelled the same and I could read, too great a change in type or color could make the thing unrecognizable.
26.Oct.2007 5.11pm
Oh man! I love the old Holiday Inn logo. It’s so retro/motel. Huge mistake.
26.Oct.2007 6.56pm
They would have been much better off to go even more retro, stripping sun icon (a logo in itself) and tweaking the letting a little bit. This new one looks like someone is trying to predict web 3.0 logos.
26.Oct.2007 8.34pm
I wonder how much they paid for that redesign.
26.Oct.2007 9.54pm
Yeah well, if I think it looks like shit, it must be mainstream or completely over the top.
That’s reassuring.
Sorry for the unprofessional comment.
It’s Friday night.
26.Oct.2007 10.08pm
The reverse slant of the earlier script seems to imply a reaching-out, a gesture of hospitality to passersby. The forward slant of the new logo just looks .. fast. Maybe slick, but no implied hospitality or connection.
But then, perhaps the demographic has changed, and they are no longer interested in tourists or impulse guests. Maybe the ’slick and quick’ refers to pickups in the lounge?
Did I mention I found the earlier logos more endearing?
Enjoy!
26.Oct.2007 10.22pm
What an incredible waste of money.
26.Oct.2007 11.44pm
I think it looks like a logo for a Korean baking company.
27.Oct.2007 12.12am
sorry, but what is wrong or huge mistake? why unnecessary rebrand? and what is wrong with Korean baking company? Indeed the demographic has changed (and their stock has declined 20 percent in 2007 — That’s a lot of money!).
27.Oct.2007 1.28am
The old logo was much better. The new one better represents the generic rooms that you find in this type of motel.
27.Oct.2007 7.24am
I’m interested to see the rest of their new branding - TV commercials, pamphlets, etc. Who knows - maybe this logo will complement the image they want to convey.
Just looking at the logo, it somehow reminds me of the “ti” Treasure Island logo in Las Vegas (unfortunately changed right before pirates became cool again). To me it says “want to have the kind of fun you’d have at an expensive resort for cheap?”
I definitely prefer the original logo, and agree that they should have used a backslant on the text.
- Lex
27.Oct.2007 8.37am
Isn’t the new H supposed to represent an interstate exit? At least that’s what I see.
Of course, I still don’t like it, and I prefer the original.
27.Oct.2007 12.16pm
I think the biggest problem is that the new design is very trendy, and will look dated quickly. By stripping down the old logo the designers could have leveraged brand equity to create an almost timeless logo.
27.Oct.2007 10.56pm
What is wrong with Korean baking company?
Oh you silly. There is nothing wrong with Korean Baking companies. Nothing AT ALL. That is not the point. The point is that the new logo rises only to the level of effectiveness typical of small to mid size asian business with limited interest in effectively communicating with an American audience.
An effective re-brand will resonate with customers and when it’s a well recognized brand it often needs to be an extension of previous branding efforts. The best you can say is that the new logo wipes the slate clean an creates the opportunity to create new associations. But if thats what you want you are better of re-naming the business as well. This ID is neither here nor there.
If you disagree feel free to chime in.
28.Oct.2007 6.39pm
Whenever I see the (old) Holiday Inn logo I think to myself that the “I” looks like the cooler, strung-out cousin of the “L” in the Staples logo. This is too bad.
29.Oct.2007 4.57am
I think the old logo looks very much like a lot of the logos designed in the same period. It’s nice, but corporate not very strong. The new one is stronger but too modern (now). But we can’t judge a logo on it’s own. I like to see the graphic language around it.
29.Oct.2007 5.42am
The old logo hearkened back to the golden age of the road trip and the hospitality implied. The new logo by contrast is quite bland. My guess is that “corporate” in all it’s wisdom (said dripping with sarcasm) realized that a growing portion of its customer base is either too young to have taken a road trip in the family station wagon or not American and therefore wouldn’t get the visual references, hence the decision to “upgrade”.
I wish they had found a way to work the original “H” into the new logo. I pass a Holiday Inn on my way to my beach house and I always smile at the logo. I’ll drive straight by this sign and not even notice it’s a Holiday Inn.
29.Oct.2007 9.02am
Another aspect of the old design is the color. The old Green ( not shown in this post) is a very Starbucks looking color - by today’s associations anyway. Holiday inn may have decided that they needed to get out from under Starbuck’s massive marketing machine’s color space and colonize a new color space. ’Green’ as in ’eco’ may have been something they were attempting to imply too since it is fashionable to be seen as ’green’ now irrespective of any reality.
29.Oct.2007 12.15pm
OK this I have to share - I just showed this to a designer friend of mine and she said it reminds her of Tampax or other feminine hygiene packaging.
29.Oct.2007 3.31pm
I must admit that I never liked the old Holiday inn logo or any of them. It just always looked tacky. The thing is, when you go to a Holiday Inn, the brand reflects the product accurately. What you see is what you get. There are no promises made, it is just a room. The new logo does not improve either the image or the product. It is fear branding. They are running scared and doing something in hopes things will improve. The economy is more the problem than the logo. The new logo sucks big time though. It is a non-brand and like a water soluble tattoo, will fade from memory with the wash. Pass them a green bar of Irish Spring Soap to hasten the passage to obscurity.
ChrisL
29.Oct.2007 3.37pm
Like Chris, I never liked the old logo. The original to me looked awkward and tacky. The revision that Mark shows above is an improvement, but not great. The new H thing is to me shockingly bad, but then I’ve felt that way about a few big corporations revisions. If this is how they make decisions on their visual face to the world, I wonder about their other decisions...
29.Oct.2007 3.53pm
...she said it reminds her of Tampax or other feminine hygiene packaging.
I was thinking that it looks like a logo for a Women’s gym, where a Y turns into a curvy jumping woman. But the Tampax comparison works, too.
29.Oct.2007 4.32pm
“The thing is, when you go to a Holiday Inn, the brand reflects the product accurately. What you see is what you get. There are no promises made, it is just a room.”
That’s the opposite of what the original logo stood for. In the USA of the ’50s there were no expressways, only highways. And there was no consistency for lodging on any of the routes. A very hardworking and smart man from my corner of the globe got frustrated after a long car trip with his family by this lack of reliable, consistent delivery of lodging services. So he created Holiday Inns.
The man was Kemmons Wilson and his Holiday Inns delivered a consistent promise. A person could travel from coast to coast or border to border and know exactly what they could expect with a stay at a Holiday Inns hotel. It was a new idea and the right thing at the right time. Car travel was beginning to grow exponentially and the national expressway system was just on the horizon.
The company did very well under Wilson’s leadership. But he retired in 1979 and the company and its logo started getting mucked up since then. That’s when the promise started to die. Since the mid-80s the company has been under the control of various big investment groups. This most recent tweak of the logo removes the last bit of that emotional connection that the brand represented. I honestly don’t know why they bothered to keep the name because there is nothing of the original company or brand promise left.
As to the original sign, based on my casual interest in it over the years, I’ve asked many questions and heard that the founders wife, Dorothy, sketched it out and took it to one of the local sign shops for refinement. These signs were discontinued because of the big expense in maintaining them. That’s a classic, yet stupid, “it-looks-good-on-paper” decision. The signs were far less expensive and a better branding investment than all of the TV and print advertising the company buys.
Awkward and tacky? The logo and sign are classic 1950s Americana. So maybe it is awkward and tacky, but it’s a fine and beautiful representation of the era it came from. Maybe it’s like another awkward and tacky brand from around here during the 1950s, a guy named Elvis Presley.
29.Oct.2007 4.46pm
>The logo and sign are classic 1950s Americana.
From the first moment I saw it, which was in the ’50s, I thought it looked awkward, and I still do. Now I’d say it looks amateurish, which apparently it was. You can have a great company with a bad logo, but it’s still a bad logo. There are great 50’s designs of all kinds, including type and logos, but to this old pair of eyes, the Holiday Inn logo isn’t one of them.
Incidentally, the fact the Chris and I grew up in the ’50 probably means we are less impressed by the ’retro’ vibe of the design. It ain’t retro to us, just old.
30.Oct.2007 10.14am
>awkward, amateurish... it’s still a bad logo.
I can agree with awkward, tacky, amateurish. But I have to disagree with it being a bad logo. It was unique, distinctive and had lots of character. I’ve been traveling a lot lately and have gotten lost twice trying to find the hotel where I was due to stay. The new hotel signs are boring, bland and blend in with every other sign on the road. But you couldn’t miss those Holiday Inn signs, just like you couldn’t miss the big McDonalds arches or the Shoney’s Big Boy. They worked. They worked very well for what they were intended to do.
This new version is much more refined. But it might as well be a logo for a soap, a soft drink, a landscape company or nearly anything else. It’s boring, not unique, looks just like a million others, and therefore a very well drafted yet bad logo. It does smell good though.
30.Oct.2007 1.26pm
The logo looks like it belong on my Mac’s dock.
and its a really lame freeware program.
31.Oct.2007 1.25pm
Have they started putting commercial logos up on exit ramps in the US? In Canada, you will see them, usually a mile before the exit, with generic signs for gas and lodging, but lately there are ones for commercial places, like Macdonalds. This new logo would work well in such places, once it gets engrained into our memories.
31.Oct.2007 2.31pm
We have those signs, too Don. But the quality of the printing leaves a lot to be desired, so while the text might work, I’m pretty sure that the logomark will look weird. Of course, some states let business put their owns signs on the highway, so in those states Holiday Inn can spend whatever it takes to get a working sign made.