Earlier this month I wrote about The Livestrong Foundation’s decision to change its logo and image following founder Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace. At the time I mentioned that the change, while significant for the organization’s image, was only a minor tweak in terms of the iconography. It turns out I wasn’t the only person who thought so.
“Given the fact that the charity does great work, but is still suffering from the association with Lance Armstrong, their recent logo redesign doesn’t do them justice,” a representative from DesignCrowd, an online design firm, told me in an email. The company felt that the design was lacking, and rather than sticking with the age-old Internet tradition of complaining online without offering anything constructive, DesignCrowd actually did something.
The company created a contest to design a new logo for The Livestrong Foundation and asked the more than 112,000 graphic designers in its crowdsourcing infrastructure to reimagine the brand’s logo. More than 500 new designs have been submitted for the logo, which you can see on the company’s contest page. The winner will receive $500, and DesignCrowd will donate the new logo to The Livestrong Foundation.
Whether or not The Livestrong Foundation uses the winning logo (I doubt it), it’s a testament to something everyone in our industry already knows: logos matter. No major firm can make an adjust to its image without people noticing, and people are going to have an opinion about any change, especially in the online age. Fortunately the foundation has a positive reputation and people like DesignCrowd’s designers are offering to help, but there are plenty of companies who’ve made changes that aren’t so well received.
Read Colleen’s recent blog about Louis Vuitton to learn about another international operation that’s experiencing some logo growing pains.
