Well it looks as though Gapgate is over as quickly as it appeared. After all the speculation, they did indeed pull a Tropicana. And what started out as a fun little experiment for us, quickly swelled far beyond our expectations. We received hundreds of submissions, so many that we had trouble keeping up. So now it’s time to sort through all of them and choose the winners. But before we do, I wanted talk a little about the contest in general and what we’ve learned during the past week.
As we mentioned in the previous post, the contest is not affiliated with Gap in any way. We are not crowd sourcing a new logo for Gap. To think that we are is to misunderstand the concept of crowd sourcing as well as our intentions. This contest was designed to give people an opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of Laird + Partners; to see what they would do if tasked with the (apparently) impossible mission of rebranding Gap. These mega-rebrands are always hit with a wave of inevitable criticism, but rarely do you see designers offering viable alternatives in addition to their critiques. It’s harder than it looks. I wanted to challenge our readers to not just criticize the new logo, but provide an alternative solution. The contest was an exercise — like a school project — and had nothing to do with Gap’s ludicrous (thankfully temporary) decision to engage in crowd sourcing.
The entries were interesting to say the least. Submissions ran the gamut from tongue-in-cheek innuendo to well executed contenders to the original logo. What filled the space between was a raft of subtle variations and incremental evolutions that all seemed to rely heavily on the original brand. But I suppose that’s what’s at the core of this whole argument: people apparently love the blue square.
So now we leave it up to you again. Please refer to the submissions on the original post, noting the number of the submission (directly below the image on the left) and place your vote here. Voting will be open until 11:59 PM Wednesday October 13th. (Update: Voting is now closed, winners posted soon)
Thanks to everyone who submitted a logo, good luck!
