Adobe CS4 Logo Fail?
I wanted to write about the release of Flash CS4 so naturally I went to Adobe’s home page looking for a copy of their new CS4 logo to paste into my article. But much to my surprise, the CS4 logo was nowhere to be found. Various glyphs, runes, icons or elements representing other software applications were liberally scattered throughout Adobe’s site but I couldn’t find a single image with the new CS4 logo.
Is Adobe ashamed of their new logo?
They might be. I used Google to do a quick image search and found Aral Balkan’s article comparing the uninspired CS4 logo to the work of a first-year Typography student. One commenter even went so far as to call it, “a stick figure on its knees, scratching its ass.” While that may be a bit harsh, I think the logo has all the design elegance of those cheap plastic hooks used to hang X-mas lights on rain gutters.
What do you think of Adobe’s new CS4 logo?
It may not be the most important part of a hot new software release but I think it’s interesting to see how Adobe uses or perhaps fails to use their own tools.
Comments(11)
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It’s truly horrible. It’s a good example of using the shiny blending tools in photoshop just because they are there. You get the feeling that whoever did this turned on all the bevel crap and then said ‘look, i made it more better’. And true enough even if you had it without the shine it’s the uncouth arse scratcher. Rubbish.
At first view the logo is looking rather amazing.
The “CS” letters have a very much dynamic intention but the “4” fails poorly.
At second sight I thought: Oh my god, they´re right it´s really
“a stick figure on its knees, scratching its ass.”
This second view intention is killing the whole (in general really amazing) logo.
says allot about the designer / coder balance that the folks at Adobe are striking with their new Flash software.
Revenge of the nerds, indeed.
I hate it. I think the stick figure remark is right on the money. Aside from that, it’s not even pleasant to look at. It’s imbalanced and inconsistent.
It’s a great logo, nice and clean.
And why should it work for each version of CS?
Such things need change! I think Adobe did a great job with it.
What was wrong with the CS3 logo, simple, clean, easy.. I don’t like it when things are changed for change sake.
@JMC, It won’t work for CS5?
Not only does it work, it looks awesome! 😉
One thing’s for sure, it won’t work for CS5, so we’re only stuck looking at it for one version…
The rest of their logos seem to fit well within a square to serve as icons. I tried cropping the above image to fit inside a square canvas and it looked goofy. I’m not a designer, but I think it probably has something to do with “negative space”. Just a guess.
I don’t like it either. Looks like someone tried too hard to come up with a “cool” logo. There seems to be a disconnect with the rest of their product line. All other products have a clean, simple, and uniform design.
i must admit that the first time i saw it i stood for like 5 minutes trying to find out what it actually was.
i don’t like it . 🙁