New Gap Logo A Bust

So much for new beginnings! Gap Inc. has resumed use of its iconic logo and abandoned a new design that only a week after launching a new design that customers panned as an “amateur PowerPoint presentation.”

Ouch.

On Oct. 14, the San Francisco-based retailer — which also owns Banana Republic and Old Navy — announced that it would be adopting a new logo that used a Helvetica typeface in plain black and a small blue gradient box at the upper right corner — just in time for the holiday shopping season. Gap had used its classic white-on-navy blue logo since its founding in 1969.

And that’s pretty much where the trouble started.

Gap took a lot of flak online for stealthily swapping out its iconic faceprint. Many customers expressed extreme disappointment over the change, and inundated the company’s online pages with comments calling the new logo “cheap” and “uninspired.”

Gap got the message…loud and clear.

“We’ve learned just how much energy there is around our brand. All roads were leading us back to the blue box, so we’ve made the decision not to use the new logo,” Marka Hansen, President of Gap North America, said in a statement.

Hansen conceded that the company “did not go about this in the right way.”

Ya think, Marka.

She added: “We’ve learned a lot in this process. We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community. This wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing. There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way.“