Old Logos vs. New Logos

There comes a time in a brand's life where it'll have to change it's identity. Much like how a senior in high school can change as a freshman in college, if a brand lives long enough and feels the need to be relevant again or needs to reach a new audience, it'll change it's appearances/logo.

Sometimes the change will be flawless. The logo only gets better over time. Over the years they've looked at what worked, what didn't work, and made the best possible logo taking all that into consideration. Consider the Chargers logo for example:

                              This was the first San Diego Chargers Logo. Not to pretty huh?

Seriously, this was one busy logo. Some sort of dragon/horse/griffin/whatever above a lightning bolt within a shield. The new Chargers logo is much cleaner, better to look at, and it looks much more nifty on a helmet.

(The only thing they did this season was CHARGE into mediocrity) nyuk nyuk nyuk

They got down to the nitty gritty with this one. It's a simple logo, and it's really all that the chargers needed to be in the first place. No griffin/dragon looking monster thing and hokey looking font. Just a nice lightening bolt perfectly shaped for a helmet.

Other logos can go the other way with age, almost like a mid-life crisis.

I'm looking at you, Mr. Ford.

I'm also looking at you, Arby's. 

I'm not an Arby's fan, but their logo worked for what it was. Simple cowboy hat and a font that works with the hat. Everything works together nicely. It's nothing awesome, but it's unoffensive. Then they had to do this. 

Why is the hat at an angle view? Why is the font not? Why use a meat cutter as the apostrophe if you won't even go anywhere with that idea in the rest of the logo? 

This mess seems life they wanted to in 3 directions at once, and failed in all of those directions. The simple non-capitalized type doesn't work with the unsimple, garish hat, and apostrophe could've been salvaged if they got rid of the hat altogether. The deeper shade of red isn't as inviting either. It's almost too blood red. 

I guess what I've learned writing this post is that, well if something doesn't work, change it, but make sure the change is better and effectively represents your brand better than what came before, or takes it in a new and brighter direction and future. And if something does work, leave it for the new changes, because that's what we liked in the first place.

If it isn't broke, well, you can still fix it up a little bit.