Gap's 2010 logo: a week without the blue box

Gap's September 29 and October 6, 2010 captures both advertise a WINTER PREVIEW. Clothing photographs fill the page beneath a row of departments that includes Women, Men, GapMaternity and babyGap, while a message about international shipping runs across the header beside the logo.

Before · 2010-09-29

Replacement · 2010-10-06

Look at the left end of that navigation. In the September capture, tall white capitals sit inside a dark blue box; in October, black letters spell Gap, with a small blue gradient square overlapping the upper-right corner of the word. The letters have grown. The box has shrunk.

The smaller brand tab at the very top changes too, repeating the replacement among the links to Gap's sister brands so that shoppers encounter it there as well as in the main store header. The product pictures still invite them to browse winter clothes.

Other details vary between the captures, including the discount promotion. The before-and-after comparison places the disputed logo inside the store where customers met it, with everyday merchandising continuing around the change.

Gap's 2010 backlash spread through pages outside its own store. The Guardian reported more than 2,000 Facebook comments criticizing the change, alongside a parody Twitter account and a website that let people make mock versions of the new logo.^[3] The design became something people could answer with another design.

Comments put objections in front of the company. The parody account and make-your-own-logo site let the argument travel beyond Gap's Facebook page, where a shopper could join in simply by mocking a design that had already appeared at the top of the store. Gap acknowledged a simpler request: bring the blue box back.

Gap had explored soliciting ideas from the online community. Its October 11 withdrawal statement admitted that it had missed the opportunity to involve people properly, then abandoned the crowdsourcing approach:^[2]

The reversal settled which mark would appear above the navigation. Asking the crowd to supply alternatives had not resolved that question.

Gap's October 11, 2010 statement committed to dropping the replacement from gap.com and restoring the familiar logo across its channels. It also announced a red version of the box for the holiday campaign.^[2] Another change was coming.

Our October 24 homepage, shown at the top of this story, records the blue box back in place thirteen days after the announcement. The winter collage has given way to a large denim photograph. Shoppers see another campaign, under the recovered mark.

That is the extent of the reversal these pages demonstrate: a withdrawn logo and a restored shape. The statement leaves room for seasonal color and future design changes. It does not promise to freeze the store.

Compare Digg's v4 dispute, where the demand for old controls reached into a rewritten news system. Gap's three captures have a much cleaner visual ending. The small gradient square is gone. The white letters are inside the box again.