Yahoo, a $10 billion company with a hideous logo, had not changed said logo in 18 years. So when CEO Marissa Meyer and a design team set about the task of coming up with a new logo, they had a lot of requirements.
In a post on her Tumblr, she gives a behind-the-scenes look at the process of creating a new logo, writing:
We knew we wanted a logo that reflected Yahoo - whimsical, yet sophisticated. Modern and fresh, with a nod to our history. Having a human touch, personal. Proud.
We didn’t want to have any straight lines in the logo. Straight lines don’t exist in the human form and are extremely rare in nature, so the human touch in the logo is that all the lines and forms all have at least a slight curve.
And:
Our last move was to tilt the exclamation point by 9 degrees, just to add a bit of whimsy.
Just a bit. Just nine degrees.
So while the old logo (on top) was really hideous; the new logo (below) is hideous in a new and different way. With just a bit of whimsy!