Top 10 Logo Changes

The hotel chain dumped its highly recognizable gold font color and red crown in favor of a more modern blue typeface and a glossy blue “BW” orb. The change will make those Best Western signs lining interstate highways more contemporary, if less distinctive.

The telecommunications company is shrinking its signature red check mark in a new logo that’s considerably less busy than the previous one, to the point of being a bit boring. Verizon said the new look is meant to reflect adaptability in the constantly changing world of technology.

The Viacom-owned network used to be known for playing classic ’60s and ’70s sitcoms—hence the hint of a boob tube in the corner of the old logo. But today the network has its own slate of original programming and says it is targeting Gen X’ers. The new design doesn’t scream retro, though it doesn’t scream anything else especially memorable either.

Virtual reality company Oculus is getting a new look now that it’s owned by Facebook. The startup is dumping the word “Oculus” from its logo design in favor of a sideways “O” that’s shaped like the company’s headsets. The sleek, minimalist logo was created with thought to “formats and technologies yet to be invented,” design studio Mackey Saturday wrote in a blog post.

As part of a comprehensive rebranding, KFC removed the red border behind its iconic Colonel Sanders illustration. It also took away the Colonel’s body to make it easier to focus on his well-known face. “We simplified and stripped back the legendary Sanders, mixing heritage with a modern, flattened rendering of KFC’s iconic founder,” design studio GrandArmy wrote in a description of the redesign.

The International House of Pancakes decided that its old logo looked too much like a person frowning, so they ditched the “Restaurant” label and flipped the red band upside down to make a smile. The new look is either cute or slightly unsettling, depending on how long you stare into IHOP’s soulless white eyes.

The popular light beer has transitioned to a new logo that looks a bit less like a ’90s college football team’s and a bit more like the slimmed-down wordmarks that are currently all the rage. Don’t worry, though, Coors fans—the mountains on the beer bottle’s label will still turn blue when the brewski is adequately cold.

Following a change in ownership from Donald Sterling to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the Clippers were in need of a rebranding. Hence the new logo, which does away with the retro design in favor of a more modern take with bold black lettering. The best part is the “CLA” monogram that forms the dimensions of a basketball court.

The search giant didn’t change its logo much since 1999; the serif font and overly formal letter styling felt like products of the dot-com era. The new wordmark features a custom sans-serif font written in child-like script to give the impression that Google is both playful and approachable. A new letter-G symbol and a four-dot icon in Google’s signature colors will also help the company communicate its brand across a variety of new form factors, like the smartwatch and the car.

Microsoft is killing off the world’s most famous (and perhaps most reviled) web browser, Internet Explorer, in favor of a speedier and more user-friendly successor called Edge. Both logo designs use a lowercase “e” as the centerpiece, but the Edge logo gets rid of the orbit and darkens the shade of blue on the overall design a bit. It’s not a huge departure for what’s supposed to be a ground-up rethinking of the web browser, but Microsoft probably wants to hold onto the millions of people who equate clicking that tiny “e” with accessing the Internet.