Kodak’s New Logo - Out of Focus?
Quick, whose name is on your digital camera?
Leica, Palm, Canon, Philips
Next, whose name is on your camera’s memory card?
Actually, I have no idea
Next, name an American company that built their name on photography film?
Kodak. Hey, is the film in my fridge still good?
I think you can see Kodak’s problem. They didn’t move fast enough to stay relevant in this new digital age. So, to get a foothold, they change their logo.
I find this interesting mainly because I don’t remember seeing the big red ‘K’ for years. Based on a quick glance of the Kodak website looks like it’s used only when they have enough vertical space. In all other cases, they use the wordmark.
Then again, I found this on digg linking to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle and haven’t been able to verify it. Hopefully, Kodak is really putting their money into making interesting things rather than changing their logo’s typeface.
3 Comments
This is the age of “let’s change our logo JUST when the old one was gaining ‘timless’ status and make sure the new logo is as dry/generic/bland as possible!”
That said, Kodak does appear to be making some interesting things. They were very late to the Digicam revolution, but some of their new products look intriguing. This one caught my eye (dual lens wide-angle 5mp cam):
http://kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=2/3/9/19/31/7402/7403&pq-locale=en_US
It’s just something about that gold color they used before just reminds me of shag carpet or bad wallpaper or something. That said they should have stuck with the old anyway.
That camera does look nice.. I just got a compact camera to supplement my big 10x optical camera. Linked above looks like a good compromise (between size/zoom)
If branding and design is about communicating, then the new Kodak logo says, “pffffffffffffffft”, nothing. I’ve seen first year design students create better, yikes!
Better products with better reviews, and an useful website with features, extras, would have done loads more to change my feelings towards their brand.