Despite 29 million monthly visits (with “one out of every five people on the Internet” using it), 57,000-plus topics and more than 1.2 million “pieces of original content” I have never had a friend, designer or otherwise, refer me to About.com — or, if so, I can’t remember. I may have followed a sangria recipe once — or, if not, I can’t remember either. This is not a knock on their vast content as, clearly, there are those who consume it but maybe it’s more a reflection of their lack of brand impact. One reason could be that when you stand for everything, you stand for nothing. And with volume being the biggest attraction, it’s no surprise that About.com’s identity is non-existent, despite their commitment to the color red. With little fanfare and no press releasing, the web Goliath has introduced a new cleaner logo that brings the site out of its Web 1.0 roots (it was launched in 1996) and sheds the crazy horizontal scaling of a Humanist sans serif font that I can’t recognize with a new Geometric sans serif font that I can’t recognize either. (I think there is some mixing and matching going on). The old About.com logo had the overstayed welcome quirkiness as the Google logo has now so, to me, it’s nice to see the site grow up. Even if I won’t remember.

Thanks to Tim Hettler for the tip.

By Armin on Jun.01.2007 in Media › Link