Business

Famous Corporate Logo Redesigns

Name: Famous Corporate Logo Redesigns
Creator: Community curated
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Gap's one-day disaster, Pepsi's billion-dollar circle, Instagram's flat makeover — which corporate logo redesign caused the biggest stir in branding history?

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Source:Community curated

Updated:3/7/2026

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15/15

Brand↕	Redesign Year↕	Design Agency / Designer↕	Public Reception↕	Known For↕
Gap	2010	Laird+Partners	Universally hated — reverted in 6 days	The most spectacular logo failure in modern history — Gap replaced its iconic navy-blue box with a Helvetica wordmark and a tiny gradient square, the internet exploded with mockery within hours, they crawled back to the original in less than a week, a masterclass in how not to rebrand
Pepsi	2008	Arnell Group	Controversial — leaked design doc mocked	Cost reportedly $1 million and came with a leaked 27-page pseudo-scientific document invoking the golden ratio, the Earth's magnetic field, and the Mona Lisa to justify tilting the white stripe — the logo itself is fine, but the pretentious rationale became one of design's greatest punchlines
Instagram	2016	Instagram in-house team	Initially hated, now universally accepted	Ditched the beloved retro Polaroid camera icon for a flat gradient purple-orange-pink glyph — millions mourned the skeuomorphic original, but within months the new logo became so embedded in culture that most people forgot what the old one looked like
Tropicana	2009	Arnell Group	Disastrous — $30M in lost sales	Replaced the iconic straw-in-an-orange image with a generic glass of juice and moved the brand name sideways — shoppers literally couldn't find Tropicana on shelves, sales plummeted 20% in two months, reverted to the original, cost the company an estimated $30 million
Airbnb	2014	DesignStudio London	Polarizing — mocked for suggestive shape	The Belo symbol was meant to represent belonging, but the internet immediately noticed it resembled various body parts and anatomical shapes — endless parody accounts sprang up, yet the logo stuck and is now one of the most recognizable symbols in tech
Yahoo!	2013	Marissa Mayer / in-house	Widely panned as boring	CEO Marissa Mayer personally led a weekend design sprint to create a new logo using Optima typeface with beveled edges — the result was a forgettable purple wordmark that satisfied no one, widely seen as a metaphor for Yahoo's confused identity during its long decline
Uber	2016	Uber in-house (Travis Kalanick)	Confused — nobody understood it	CEO Travis Kalanick personally designed a cryptic abstract circuit-board-like icon replacing the clean U logo — riders and drivers had no idea what it meant, different colors for different countries added chaos, quietly replaced in 2018 with a simple UBER wordmark after Kalanick's departure
Mastercard	2016	Pentagram (Michael Bierut)	Widely praised as elegant evolution	Stripped the brand name from the overlapping red and yellow circles, proving the symbol was so iconic it needed no text — Pentagram's Michael Bierut executed a perfect modernization, one of the rare redesigns where literally everyone agreed it was an improvement
Google	2015	Google in-house	Mostly positive, some nostalgia	Switched from the serif Catull typeface to a custom geometric sans-serif called Product Sans — the colorful letter sequence stayed, but the playful serifs that gave Google its quirky personality vanished, replaced by clean Silicon Valley efficiency, the four-dot loading animation became iconic
Mozilla Firefox	2019	Ramotion	Mixed — fox tail only, no globe	Simplified the detailed fox-hugging-a-globe icon into a swooshy abstract flame shape — purists mourned the loss of the adorable fox face, the new mark was technically a 'master brand' icon with the detailed fox kept for the browser, confused almost everyone about what Firefox actually looked like now
Kraft	2009	Brand consultancy	Hated — reverted within 2 years	Replaced the bold red Kraft logo with a lowercase pastel design featuring a smiley-face flower — looked like a greeting card company instead of a food giant, consumers rejected the friendly softness, Kraft quietly brought back a modified version of the strong original
Animal Planet	2018	Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv	Praised for bold simplicity	Replaced the friendly elephant-flipping-the-M logo with a stark blue jumping elephant silhouette — the playful original had charm, but the network wanted to signal serious wildlife content, the new leaping elephant conveys wild energy instead of cartoon friendliness
Slack	2019	Pentagram (Michael Bierut)	Reluctantly accepted	Replaced the beloved tilted hashtag plaid icon with a cleaner pinwheel of speech-bubble shapes — the old logo was genuinely charming but rendered terribly at small sizes and on different backgrounds, Pentagram's fix was technically necessary but emotionally felt like losing a friend
Weight Watchers (WW)	2018	Pentagram	Confused — brand identity crisis	Renamed to just 'WW' with a tagline 'Wellness that Works' to distance from diet culture — most people had no idea what WW stood for anymore, the rebrand tried to ride the wellness wave but lost decades of brand recognition, members still called it Weight Watchers
Leeds United	2018	In-house concept	Fan revolt — scrapped before launch	The football club unveiled a new crest featuring a saluting fan silhouette that looked like a clip-art bathroom sign — 77,000 fans signed a petition to kill it within 24 hours, the club sheepishly announced a fan consultation process, the original crest survived, a landmark in supporter power over branding