Photoshop gets a new logo (users get opportunity to attack)

On John Nack's blog, he unveils the new logo and tagline for Adobe's Photoshop family of products. The aim is to tie together what's become a pretty wide-ranging suite of products.

He then (bravely) asks his readers "So, whaddya think?"

The answer appears to be: not a hell of a lot.

Now, professional creatives are always going to be a tough crowd but it's safe to say that the positive comments are outweighed by the negative ones by about 50 : 1.

For my money, I find it confusing. It's difficult not to simply see a speech bubble and wonder: what's that got to do with a photo app? Others commenting have already highlighted how it looks like some other logos – and let's face it, these days any logo based on a letter (P) or resembling a common symbol (the speech bubble) is going to have plenty of company. The aqua treatment is likely to date rapidly (it already feels old) and the tagline is a tad uninspired. But then, it's easy to criticise other's work.

Overall, though, I wonder why Adobe felt it was necessary. Yes the Photoshop family is growing but the name alone holds it all together – at the high end this is still the gold standard for image editing software and the app most people (at all levels) aspire to use.

To me, it seems a redundant exercise.

Comments

[Anthony Galvin]

What's interesting about this 'furore' compared to the Quark logo 'incident' is that Photoshop has such a dominant position amongst creative professionals. Although they might not like the new logo they are unlikely to swap the desktop shortcut for an alternative.

Adobe's dominance of this corner of the market is almost absolute. Though with the current pricing perhaps the challenge will come from the likes of GIMP?