Response to attempt at healing w/o concessions

Another Deviant, iamcloudsky, wrote this as what he/she seems to think is a healing/peacemaking measure: To close, what happens now?

Here is my response:

So...

"They'll probably change it again in the future. CAN'T right now though due to there being a LOT of money already spent on it, & promotional content that was already released in the media. Articles have been written, & events about it have taken place. It is literally impossible for all of this to be reversed."

This reminds me of a woman I knew in college who said of a loser boyfriend--, "But I wasted so much time on him already."

Our response (almost in unison) was, "then don't waste any more."

The reason DA staff doesn't want to reverse the logo now is because doing so will make them look foolish and look like clueless web kids to a wider audience than ever before. They'll have to admit that after spending all that money and making such an expansive, expensive, self-congratulatory fuss on the unveiling, they only made a major mistake. Unfortunately, they already look foolish without the reversal. And social media has allowed unhappy users to spread it expansively.

This is about ego. It's NOT impossible to reverse, and there's no such thing as bad publicity. Reversing it would get more people curious about the site and make the staff look better (especially if they bothered to go to their membership to see what logos the members can create to replace this fiasco). Keeping DA in the media and showing that staff has the good business sense to listen to its clients would be a good thing. Granted, reversing would hurt Moving Brands' reputation and egos. But I don't see that as a bad thing, and DA staff should also be looking for ways to recoup money for reasons like Moving Brands not peforming due diligence and doing a simple Google photo search to see if the logo was similar to someone else's. The members had no problem finding it quickly.

I understand the need to update the logo -- it looked dated. However, when you have a logo that you have to explain, that's a failure. When your clients overwhelming are hostile to the change on artistic grounds -- in short, their area of expertise, it's a failure. This is not an improvement on the old logo; if it had been, support would've been greater. Yes, some would've been naysayers, but people know quality when they see it.

I don't think so much site-user fuss would've happened if the staff simply changed the logo. However, they had to spend large amounts of money and then justify it and -- after a big tease and commissioning artists to make use of the logo in works -- put up a big, pretenious explanation full of nonsensical goobledegook. "Bleed and breed art"? That says nothing. It's polysyllabic babbling. "Where art meets application" says something -- and something useful to users and potential clients.

The logo itself is NOT the problem and NOT what people are reacting to overall, from what I see. It's the attitudes of staff and the way they wasted time and money on an insignificant change when more pressing matters are about. And then staff expected a certain amount of congratulations and cheering -- from artists who recognize bad branding when they see it. It's puzzling to many of us why such a fuss was made over the logo when the important thing -- a long overdue app -- was hidden in the unveiling. It's almost as if it was misdirection to distract for the app being long past due. If so, it worked, but the "Our Story" explanation shows how touchy-feely the sessions with Moving Brands were, and the staff appears to have drunk the Kool-Aid (tm).

I've been a journalist for 27 years, and I've seen lots of consultants get overpaid to tell people/officials how smart/insightful/cutting edge they are in following the consultants' expertise. The more important lesson from journalism, however, is that every article starts with one focus: "What does this mean to the reader"? The idea of what this logo could/would/should mean to DA users was not considered, as evidenced by the consultants putting an article up on Twitter about the importance of "edgy" design in response to bad publicity. And I don't consider this edgy design, just sloppy work. This is, as one person wrote to me, "a classic product of hubristic bubble echo chamber 'thinking.'" 

I've written more on all this here: chiburbs.deviantart.com/journa…
and here: chiburbs.deviantart.com/journa…

As for Ikue and others thinking this is a "rebellion," they need to step down immediately. There are two ways of looking at DeviantArt. The first is as a community where people work together; the second is as a business where the business must meet the clients' needs to survive. A "rebellion" indicates that they think this is their fiefdom. This is not a mindset that will allow Deviantart to survive; however, it is the mindset that precipitated the fall of Myspace, Friendster...

It also makes me wonder if the "submit" button became such a standout eyesore green in October because it was a subliminal message: shut up and accept what we tell you is for the best.