I was one of the UX designers for eBay in 1997-98, just before the IPO. I was working on what would become the Gallery view.
When Meg Whitman took over, I presented the work we had done so far. I was pretty wet behind the ears at the time, and I was enamored with the latest shiny objects on the Web. eBay, by way of contrast, had a look that could be charitably described as "homespun." I was busy polishing things up, tightening the color palette, improving typography (as much as one could in 1998), reducing clutter, and using what I thought of as killer JavaScript flourishes to really blow people away with the Gallery View. I may have even tried to introduce some Flash at the time, I'm not sure.
What I do remember was the way Meg schooled me when I came in to present my slick new state-of-the-art Gallery. I don't remember her exact words, but she told me that I was building something that simply wasn't eBay. She explained to me that the success of eBay came from the sellers who thought of eBay not as a company, but as their own corner of the Web that belonged to them. The audience for eBay, she explained, was mom and pop types, people who were comfortable with garage sales and flea markets, and who had built a level of trust with eBay based on what they saw as a brand that shared their down-home values.
eBay's biggest competitor at the time was Yahoo! Auctions, and eBay was killing them, because people thought of Yahoo! as a faceless, monolithic corporation, and couldn't feel a sense of ownership about placing their auctions there. I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of being appropriate to your audience, and not always going for the latest, slickest design.
I've always liked the fact that their logo kept that original homespun feel. The site has slowly evolved over the years, and their audience surely has as well. It's arguable whether eBay still has the folksy appeal it had in the 1990s. The new logo represents a very authentic reflection of the change to the brand, and the company itself. The nostalgic side of me would love to see the old logo and the old brand stick around forever, but if I'm being honest, this is probably the most appropriate thing they could have done. It's a genuine expression of the brand's history and personality. You can't say much better for a logo than that.
Thank you for this story. I always wondered why ebay looks the way it does. And I always assumed it was because of greed (the reasoning being something like: "If we can charge for bold text, we will not matter how it looks"). This puts ebay's design, or the lack of design, in a much better light.
This is a wonderful example of interface as brand. Logos are such a small piece of online brands, and it's cool to hear that folks at eBay grasped this so early. Thanks a ton for sharing!
"…one that didn’t last more than, well, probably a week if my memory serves me. And thank heavens for that! Can you imagine what eBay might have become with such a boring old logo? Still, it could have happened…(shudder)." - Jim Griffith, the first customer sales representative at eBay and the current host of eBayRadio, regarding the #3 logo (above)
Never in the history of the internet has a new logo been posted to a forum and elicited a positive response. I think it's a fundamental law of the internet.
It's inoffensive, but it doesn't retain any of the personality of the iteration we know. I'm not a big fan, but for a company like ebay where their logo doesn't really appear in a lot of different places, it's fine.
If Apple or Microsoft released a logo with this little of personality, it would be a mistake.
They burnished out all the character. It completely lacks the quirk, play, and scrappiness of the old logo and projects a much more "neutral" and generic space. Which I suppose is a valid intention reflecting a strategic shift -- it's just a bit dull and bland for my taste.
the funny thing is -- and I'm making an assumption about ebay here based on previous experience I've had in logos and redesign -- is that this was probably the effort of hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of deliberation, re-designs, focus groups and meetings; but the end result looks like it could have been derived in about an hour of work
Yeah, it totally reflects such a process. Maybe the suits wanted something sleek and "frictionless marketplace" or something, but it also just screams process: clearly the lowest common denominator, the least offensive to the largest number of people.
The font is very retail-ish .. Macy's logo comes to mind.
And the Google/Microsoft primary colours associate it with that tech giant domain. So I guess it kinda works from that point of view but it's just a little boring for my liking.
Interesting site design Somewhat distracting and confusing but its the first time I've seen something that uses a piece-wise parallax type movement(the ebay underneath the content bars).
To make us really feel old - the kids getting their driver's licenses today were not alive when the Lion King came out on video, much less was in theaters.
Of all the potential logos that could be done for eBay
this is the absolute most boring and risk-averse logo
that could have been both presented and selected.
The zero–space kerning badly bothers me. With traditional stylized logos I think there's more artistic license, but when your logo is just a font, I feel it should be more readable.
Agreed. Or have some meaningful overlap. To me, whenever a company switches to a different logo after years of stagnant progress, it signals a last effort to artificially strengthen the brand.
It looks like the mockups, particularly the tablet one, were made in MS Paint.
edit: Also, is the "tm" really necessary? Surely they can defend any future trademark infringement disputes successfully without it? Perhaps I'm being naive about the world of intellectual property rights.
eBay's and Microsoft's new logos communicate nothing about the company/brand.
I appreciate clean, minimalist design, but logos that antiseptic are like marketing that says nothing about the product or service (which admittedly works on rare occasion...)
There was a post not so long ago on HN about prices of logos. I wonder how much they paid for this one (I hope not too much because I feel I could have done it: select a font, write ebay, color letters with colors of old logo).
Logos never stand on their own. Making them work in context is the hard part (but we can, for obvious reasons, see very little of that on the linked page).
All I will dare to say that if they plan to just change the logo this doesn’t look like a good idea. The ebay website looks very old-fashioned – and the old logo fits right in there. If they want to change their logo they have to do more than change gifs on their website. Maybe that’s planned, I don’t know.
If they want to change, their new logo (and the linked page, too) indicates that they want to change to a minimalist, simple design with few elements and lots of whitespace. I’m honestly not sure whether that fits the brand or makes for a very good ebay experience.
ebay – to me at least – has always been about cheap prices and selling stuff you no longer need to other people. Like a flea market, only more useful. (Hm, but maybe they want to change that perception of ebay?) Do I want it to look super serious and professional? I’m not sure. I’m personally a fan of that aesthetic, but I’m not sure whether it works for ebay.
To me there is nothing wrong with updating the look of ebay, to me it just seems like you have to do so carefully.
But that’s all premature speculation now. We do not currently know how the new logo will be used and that’s the important part.
When Meg Whitman took over, I presented the work we had done so far. I was pretty wet behind the ears at the time, and I was enamored with the latest shiny objects on the Web. eBay, by way of contrast, had a look that could be charitably described as "homespun." I was busy polishing things up, tightening the color palette, improving typography (as much as one could in 1998), reducing clutter, and using what I thought of as killer JavaScript flourishes to really blow people away with the Gallery View. I may have even tried to introduce some Flash at the time, I'm not sure.
What I do remember was the way Meg schooled me when I came in to present my slick new state-of-the-art Gallery. I don't remember her exact words, but she told me that I was building something that simply wasn't eBay. She explained to me that the success of eBay came from the sellers who thought of eBay not as a company, but as their own corner of the Web that belonged to them. The audience for eBay, she explained, was mom and pop types, people who were comfortable with garage sales and flea markets, and who had built a level of trust with eBay based on what they saw as a brand that shared their down-home values. eBay's biggest competitor at the time was Yahoo! Auctions, and eBay was killing them, because people thought of Yahoo! as a faceless, monolithic corporation, and couldn't feel a sense of ownership about placing their auctions there. I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of being appropriate to your audience, and not always going for the latest, slickest design.
I've always liked the fact that their logo kept that original homespun feel. The site has slowly evolved over the years, and their audience surely has as well. It's arguable whether eBay still has the folksy appeal it had in the 1990s. The new logo represents a very authentic reflection of the change to the brand, and the company itself. The nostalgic side of me would love to see the old logo and the old brand stick around forever, but if I'm being honest, this is probably the most appropriate thing they could have done. It's a genuine expression of the brand's history and personality. You can't say much better for a logo than that.