That’s definitely a big factor in a lot of contemporary logo redesigns; thin serifs and other details don’t always carry through in a world of tiny app icons. That’s why Google overhauled their visual identity a few years back.
As to the larger question “why are so many companies opting for the same, lifeless undifferentiated look?” the only real answer I have is “because none of them asked for my input.”
Exactly! Construction of this sort has been taking over Brooklyn (especially Williamsburg) for years. Gentrification. Perfectly nice brownstones and other urban residential structures have been knocked down to make way for artless occupancies that would bring in more rental/leasing $$$$. Kevin Walsh (creator/editor of Forgotten NY) has dubbed new, ugly construction there as “Federer horrors”; this alludes to the current builder cost-saving practice of having each unit’s air conditioner poking out of the units’ outer wall – blister-like – and for all to see.
weeelp… yup. That’s shit.
You’re clearly looking for the Canadian logo:
In addition to skimping on your advice, they might all be limiting themselves to fonts available on all operating systems.
What’s wrong with JPEG, BMP, etc…? 
I wondered that, too. Then I answered myself: “People strip images out of stories when reading on mobile to save data.”
That would explain why generic-looking fonts would be adopted as part of a company’s graphic standards manual but not why their official logos and logotype are so limited; generally once you finish designing a logo it just becomes its own standalone vector image rather than editable text requiring the user to have any particular font installed.
They don’t hurt until you pull them out.
They’re wordmarks not logos.
it now looks like they sell tequila or something
What about logotype?
Somebody probably mentioned it above, but the changes to these logos is probably due to their readability on small screens.
Got to stay relevant, for the kids!
Can we sleep at night? Who gives a damn?!
Stapes create a bad logo. You just made it worse.
In industry speak the term “logo” can refer to a wordmark (logotype), an icon (graphic symbol) or a combination of the two.
Welcome to Boing Boing!
I find it amusing that you went through the effort to create a new account just to express disinterest in the topic under discussion.
I was going to say, I never realized how awfully dated the Burger King logo looks… it reminds me of one of those terrible logos that got revamped to be “XTREEEEEM” in the 90s, all shiny and skewed and “dynamic”, except they just kept it while most other companies moved on.
I worked at Sun Microsystems at a time when they were courageously changing their logo.
From:
To:
All I could think is I bet somebody got a huge bonus for discovering the italic button.
(As an aside I fucking loved how the logo spelled “Sun” in all directions. That’s some clever graphic design there.)
