A few more versions of the new AOL logo. Er…make that the Aol. logo.

Does anybody remember when America Online was the 400-pound gorilla of the online world? There were many ways to go online, but AOL made the whole process very easy. AOL put together a marketing plan that included mailing CDs with their software to every man, woman, child and family pet in North America. The plan worked, though, as people were signing up as fast as AOL could send the CDs out. For years, this was the first thing you saw on the screen, just before hearing the ubiquitous, “You’ve got mail.”

While the logo isn’t great, it’s not horrible, either. It’s just sort of there. I know that a lot of designers really hated this logo, but to be honest, I was on AOL before I was designer so the logo is very familiar to me. It’s not great, but it brings back good memories from the early days of the internet (granted, 1991 wasn’t that long ago, but it was still long before many people knew much about it).

As AOL continued to grow (and grow and grow), they decided to updated the logo to be more in step with the time. In 2004, the logo was given a more contemporary feel. Strangely, the new logo was to be part of the 20th anniversary celebration of AOL, but that was still seven years in the future.

Fast forward to 2009 and we’re still 2 years shy of the 20th anniversary and AOL finds itself facing a business climate change which they didn’t anticipate. Between DSL, cable modems, wireless networks and so forth, the need to have a dedicated service to connect to the internet is no more. There are still people who use AOL, but the numbers are WAY DOWN from the good, old days. AOL needs to find a way to make themselves relevant in order to survive in the current environment. Step one in that process is, apparently, a major rebranding. Behold the future…

…that’s right, it’s a goldfish. In other versions of the logo the goldfish is replaced with a green scribble, some sort of weird brain thing or any of many other little icons with an updated type treatment. AOL’s big branding brains came up with a whole slew of icons. Their explanation (excuse, is more like it) for this is that AOL is a 21st century media company and that required a brand that is “open and generous.”

Um…yeah…whatever. Just call it what it is…we don’t know who the hell we are, who we’re supposed to be or what you want us to be. So we’ll just be everything.

Can you believe some people get paid to come up with a goldfish with type on top of it? Assuming they were paid for the design work (and I use design loosely), they should be locked up for larceny.