I know who designed the typeface; the question should be: who botched up the typeface? If you read CNN's news story on the new logo, reporter Heather Kelley states that the typeface "...is a new sans-serif typeface created by Yahoo."
The typeface is not new, it is "Optima," designed by Hermann Zapf between 1952 and 1955. Optima is used for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, as well as the font to be used for the names of those who lost their lives in the September 11 attacks, carved into bronze parapets, at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Hardly new.
TypeRight.org, the type designer's rights advocates, states that "To have originated a typeface design, you must have created the design and not copied it. If, on the other hand, you set out to duplicate the style of an existing typeface, then you are creating a revival. And if your typeface is based on the outlines from another typeface then you are creating a derivative typeface (also known as "remix")."
So the typeface used for the new Yahoo logo might be considered a "revival," or a "derivative" since it duplicates the style of an existing typeface, is based on outlines from Optima, but with some changes that offer "something 'new' in today's typographic palette."
But I said it's "botched up."
Not botched up in a way that the average viewer might notice, but certainly in a way that a professional typographer or type designer would certainly notice. At this point, I should say that "botched up" is a subjective evaluation. It's possible that some professionals (or non-professionals) would disagree with my conclusion. Fine. But here is my reasoning:
Optima is a very traditional "double weight" type design, straight out of the Roman Empire, but with the revolutionary feature of merely a hint of serifs. So it's a sans-serif with the feel of a serif. Technically classified as "sans-serif humanist." And a double weight roman style type face has two weights (hence the term): thick and thin.
The ratio of thick to thin can vary from one typeface to another, and humanist typefaces tend toward the lower contrast (pretty thick thins, so to speak).
The "Y" in this logo has lost its thin stroke and appears to be a single weight. The "A" has a thin cross bar, but the verticals are both equal in weight. In a roman face, since they are derived from letters drawn with a pen held at a constant angle, letters always have the thin stroke in the line that angles from top right to lower left; take a look at a proper roman typeface and note the capital A, V, M, and W. The H and the Os are fine in this logo, and the exclamation mark is simply from the italic style of the family, so not sure if it should be considered a standard character in the "new typeface design" or not.
Does this matter?
As I said, the average viewer probably won't notice. Professional type designers will, though some will think it's clever and witty.
But the problem is, I'm seeing a little too much "creativity" in the design world lately that is not creative at all. It's uncreative. It's unimaginative. It's crummy stuff. And quite often, it's someone else's work badly copied or mimicked. Thank goodness they didn't credit Hermann Zaph with this mess, but why not simply use his typeface, correctly, and credit him properly, rather than botch it up and claim it's "new"?
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