The new StumbleUpon Logo is a huge step backwards.
Seriously.
Stumbling Around the Web
For those of you who don’t know, StumbleUpon is a fabulous social media sharing site. Their Stumble tool bar is a great way to browse around the web and find new thing online based on your interests.
As you go you can give pages either a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Because it is interest driven people tend to see content they like. Plus they have some sort of learning algorithm so that it tends to show you more stuff that is similar to your likes and less of the stuff you don’t like.
You can also share websites directly with other Stumblers you are connected with, plus a whole bunch of other things.
StumbleUpon has been one of the big traffic sources to my websites over the years.
StumbleUpon Logo Horror
Up until yesterday StumbleUpon had one of the best logos in the whole social media world. I happen to like teal and green. The SU logo flowed from one side of the logo to the other like their service helps you flow through the web.
Here’s what they said about the redesign on their blog:
StumbleUpon Logo Change – We know this is a big change, and many of you (like us) had come to love our old blue and green logo. However, as we spoke with our members during our redesign process, we heard our old logo didn’t capture the true experience you had with StumbleUpon – the excitement you feel with every Stumble and the adventure that we take you on. (And just in case you were wondering, we didn’t change it because some users saw a similarity between our logo and Cascade Complete dishwasher packets, although the likeness is uncanny!) While our old logo will be missed, we have also heard from many of you who really like the new logo and feel that it represents what StumbleUpon is to you. We hope that you will come to love it as much as we do here. Plus it’s going to look GREAT on T-shirts and swag – stay tuned!
So. Let me get this right. The old logo “didn’t capture the true experience” with StumbleUpon. But this new orange eyesore somehow does?
It looks like a clogged pipe! Their marketing folks need some Drano. Talk about a focus group going horribly wrong!
The Old StumbleUpon Profiles
Full Website Redesign
The logo destruction is part of a grand redesign of the StumbleUpon website. I think I get what they are going for.
Seems like they want to make StumbleUpon as much the same as other social sites as they can. They’ve change their “Favorites” to “Likes” because, well, that’s what Facebook does.
New StumbleUpon Profile
At the end of the day I suspect this is a move to try to increase engagement on the website itself. Something tells me most folks use the toolbar nearly to the exclusion of the website.
Honestly I don’t begrudge them any of the changes to the site. I do miss the old ability we had (before their previous website redesign) where we users could customize our profile pages. But hey, the trend in social media sites today is away from personalization of user profiles and towards sterile sameness.
But the logo?!! What ever were they thinking?
Update: In the Mac App Store the iPad/iPhone customer reviews are running about 26 to 3 against the new logo with many folks clamoring to bring back the old logo.
FYI, I came up with the exact same “clogged pipe” interpretation independently. It’s not just you. The new logo really does look like something I’d call a plumber for.
(Sorry, forgot to go back and change the name after I read your comment policy.)
FYI, I came up with the exact same “clogged pipe” interpretation independently. It’s not just you. The new logo really does look like something I’d call a plumber for.
Heya Jeff!
No worries on the name. I’ve got no problem with screen names and personas. It’s the obvious keyword stuffing that I find most frustrating.
And I’m with you on the new SU logo. Blech!
Hi Chris – thanks for your post – I found your analysis of the logo redesign interesting and quite entertaining! I see what you mean about it becoming more similar to other social sites but (apart from perhaps the hover over the Home, Profile and Discover being too subtle and the logic behind the category organisation being difficult to understand) the actual design is fairly impressive and good for usability. This is something we’ve picked up on anyway – http://ow.ly/83H81.
Heya Lindsay!
I get that StumbleUpon put a ton of effort into improving the experience on their website. Overall, I think I could come to see the changes to the site itself as being an improvement over their previous site.
But I still say the change to their logo was beyond horrid. Compared to their old logo this new orange… thing is a ghastly mistake.
In the new logo the s feels like it is stumbling / discovering / finding the letter u.
This is also further enhanced by the animation.
And I think that’s a lot stronger than what they had before which felt a bit generic. And yes felt like ‘flowing through the web’ but didn’t express the discovery aspect.
My 2 cents on an interesting post.
Thank you
Ummmm…am I the only one who thinks the new logo screams phallic symbol?
I thought the same thing. So did a lot of other people. God, it’s a terrible logo.
I totally agree with you… I thought it was some sort of weird version of the actual logo!
I think it was dumb to stop letting users customize their profile pages.
Great post, very interesting take.
I had a completely different reaction to the new logo. I 100% prefer the new logo. Ditching the superfluous gradient background color was a great move. Now the symbol does the talking, and quite well in my opinion. The choice of orange is bold and quite a departure from the original palette. I can understand how this would be jarring to a long-time, regular user…. admittedly, I’m not such a user and I happen to love orange ‘-)
I must say I prefer the new logo. I really like the colour. It’s cleaner and more distinctive. However I can also see the phallic symbol reference there!
Anyways, my vote is for the new logo. Fresher and more modern. But I am a designer so I would usually opt for simplicity and clean lines.