Ah, Gap, how we’ve loved you. The cool ads, your flair for fun, the logo as comfortable as a pair of eight year old Gap jeans … uh … what happened?

You’ve undoubtedly seen the posts on Facebook and Twitter; this morning one of my blog feeds did an outstanding job of detailing the “rise and fall of a great logo” … Read through a shel of my former self “Lessons from the Gap Logo Debacle” by Shel Holtz to get a grasp on the enormity of the situation.

Do you wonder how the Gap got there? Is there some graphic designer sitting at home this morning, shaking his/her head and saying, “Seriously, I told them that was horrible … from the bold black Helvetica to the floating blue box. But did they listen? NNNooooooo.”

According to our friend Shel, “The logo was designed by Trey Laird and his team at Laird and Partners, which has done design work for Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Nautica, stetson and DeBeers, to name just a few. It was commissioned, according to a statement from Gap President Marka Hansen, because “our brand and our clothes are changing and rethinking our logo is part of aligning with that.”

I hope at some point a case study of the “dysfunction junction”  tha occurred during this process is published. At this point, it’s pretty much all conjecture … but in the end, the Gap was caught with its proverbial denims around their ankles.

Has your company rebranded lately and established a new logo? How did you involve your “evangelists” in that decision in an effort to prevent this sort of backlash in the blogosphere?

Writing from sunny Evanston, Illinois on a Saturday afternoon. Beautiful day for football, crunchy leaves and enjoying some family time. Hope you’re able to do the same!