Need to see it in context.

Seems very first level. These images all look like stock.

Well. I think Wolff Olins did Aol. a great disservice.
First, because the service is obsolete in so many ways, one could could describe it as irrelevant.
Olins decided to take the money and run rather than face the client and tell the truth. Or maybe the people at Olins don't know enough about the world to see that there's absolutely no equity in the name. (An acronym for name most users have long forgotten. Sort of the search engine equivalent to Atlantic Pacific aka A&P.)

Consequently the work is a joke. Yes, lol. is the obvious response to something that matters to no one except the employees who still have their jobs, their families and dependents, shareholders and others creditors who didn't dump the stock and off course their landlords and vendors such as Olins.

I suspect the company's only hope is that the remaining "subscribers" remain inert, because the only glue that hold the service together is inertia.

I'd say that Olins and the people involved at Aol. ought to be ashamed of themselves for displaying not only a lack of genuine effort�"there isn't a drop of sweat in the work�"but also sincerity.

There are so many things wrong here. First and foremost the fact that AOL thinks that changing their logo will revive their brand/service. Even if I love the logo, what exactly are they asking me to do? Disconnect my current ISP and switch to AOL?

Here they are, blaming the economy for being on the cusp of bankruptcy, and yet this is a company that hasn't innovated in 15 years. They deserve to go out of business.

They shouldn't have gone to an Omnicorp agency for advice, they should have asked their 16 y/o nephew what to do... Because its ovbious these people dont use the internet for anything besides checking their email via Blackberry. In a recent NYT article explaining this branding decision some guy at Landor closes the piece by saying �œI have an AOL account.”.. I think that is exactly the problem here. If you have an AOL account in 2009 you are out of touch, and definitely shouldn't working on anything tech related.

As far as the logo's go, they are effortless, dated and out of context.


-Ryder Ripps
internetarchaeology.org

I agree with Ripps, AOL is definitely out of touch. And the logo redesign? YIKES! WTF?How does adding the period define their brand or even bring their brand up to date? I think it looks like an old desk top publisher designed it.

Wow. What is it? Aol, I mean. I was a Source subscriber at 300 baud. Then Compuserve. Somehow side-stepped Prodigy. They're gone. And so is Aol.

Questions about this reasonably well-conceived artwork are irrelevant. Yes the u/l case makes sense; the period makes a statement. The "o" is too strong, he could have backed off. But the portal business model (running on dedicated client-side software?) has been dead for omg nearly 10 years. Think a new logo design's gonna revive a corpse?

The little clips tell the story. What the hell does Aol mean over a fish? Or pink goo? Green string? Supposed to be, uh, fun?

What the hell does Aol mean? Anymore?

I like it !!! i think it will work very well...... it is clear....creative...cosmetic.......and customized....!!! Wolf & Ollins has done a great job....!!! cheers guys !!!

It is a conceit masquerading as a brand identity (Granted, the business strategy and brief they would have received is not clear or focused). So I can imagine the brainstorming session from whence this was vomited - multicolor puke -: "AOL is too hard in caps, let's go for a softer approach but impute the vernacular of lower case. Aol everywhere with a period... and we need to go beyond the logo as anchored in a corner. Let's make Aol. pervasive. Yes, Aol. everywhere, on fish fowl and beast, in the sea, on the mountains, in the sky. Why not a polyphonic, contrapuntal design element that crystallizes the future of being online, that is offline,...ubiquitous....Bla Bla"

Once again, 'Creativity' is no substitute for a creative-strategic approach. I am looking forward to seeing how the identity unfolds in a consistent manner across all new forms of media; how it messages to all the stakeholders and resellers who will be handing out business cards with blue fish and green ammonites on them..

This is a joke, right? Please say it is. This can't be a serious attempt at a logo design. If it is, and W&O made big money with this, I'm afraid everyone in the design field needs to reassess their business model.

Seriously, stock photos (random as they are) and lower case Aol. (and what's with the period at the end?). Well, I think the period says it all. This is the end of Aol. Period.

bmcmcmahon: LOL It's hard to keep a straight face. Better to step out of the room for a breather. Group think. Ain't it great?

i know the brand by name, but have been out of touch with how far they've been sinking. after taking the glance provided, it seems to me there's a lot of inside information thrown to the world, and "we" don't get it. i knew a photographer who used to look at certain campaigns, and imagine there was a sugar sprinkler filled with cocaine on the boardroom table during the brainstorming sessions. it was passed around, and everybody thought each idea was so great. then, the same approach was implemented in the pitch--pass around the coke, and by the end of the pitch, everyone was so stoked, this was the end all of campaigns, and the audience couldn't possibly pull away from such compelling creative!
having said all that, and reading a bit of the rationale, i understand what they're trying to achieve, i just don't see who it tested well with...or was it?

It's going to drive my Word autocorrect crazy: after using the official "Aol." logo name in a sentence, Word or my iPhone will start the next word with a capital letter. Maybe I just won't use it. "The company formerly known as AOL" or some such...

death rattles. irrelevant. wolff olins had better cash that check soon.

MTV circa 2003
Nickelodeon circa 1991