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    • Thu Jun 12, 2008

    Intuitive Logo Design?

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    I’m a big fan of Intuit and all the Quicken and Quickbooks products (yes they also sponsor some DTM initiatives)

    About a month or two ago they quietly, in my opinion, rolled out a new logo after 25 years with some variation of the old one.

    Intuit LogoI think it’s a pretty nice example of a big company getting a subtle rebranding right. Big, successful companies have lots of equity invested in all of their brand elements and it can be a bit scary changing anything. (That’s why brand consultants get $100,000 or so to come up with green blocks)

    I think Intuit has changed, certainly their ideal customer has changed, and to me the new logo represents not only that change, but a pretty deep understanding of it. Nice work gang. (I did quick interview with Intuit founder Scott Cook)

    And, in the marketing “how clever is that” category, the two T’s, dotted like I’s to look strikingly like people, nicely bracket the letters U & I. Yes, together we can make the world a safe place for balance sheets to live, work and well, be balanced!

    OK, what do you think? Is it too cute or right on the mark for today’s small business customer?

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    Posted by: John Jantsch on Jun 12, 08 | 12:12 pm
    Category: Intuit | Tags:

    « Share Your Story at the Workbench | Home | The Press Release Triple Threat »
    • Thanks for the nice post about the new logo. We'd love to hear what people think about it.
    • I like the logo but I didn't see the dotted "T"s as having human characteristics. I suppose if you were to lower the the dots closer to the top of the "T" it might look more like a person.

      Another thought that crossed my mind is that this could be seen as a negative play on the old saying "dotting your 'i's and crossing your 't's." Because they have "accidentally" dotted their "t"s.
    • I love the logo - too often marketing tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator. In this case, Intuit is embracing the idea that their customers are smart. Clever branding. Clever product. Clever customers.
    • Jared Leavitt
      Really good assessment...Thanks for following us!
    • John Jantsch
      @Lary - all that thinking about stuff has got to hurt
    • For me, the dots compromise the flow of reading the logo. In fact, even after looking for a couple minutes the dots didn't register as people until you mentioned it.
    • A couple things come to mind about the new Intuit logo.

      The dotted T's/people are a bit confusing if you look at it, I agree with Lary. More importantly, the fact that the various capitalization schemes, coupled with the dotted T's/people make you look at the logo a second more than you should to get it. In other words, the logo is not as "intuitive" as "Intuit" should be.

      I also think that ultimately, the Intuit logo is less important than the logos of its flagship products - Quicken, Quickbooks, TurboTax, etc. There is not nearly the equity in the Intuit brand as there is in these products. That said, I think this change, even after 25 yrs, isn't that big a risk for them. Not to mention, their old logo sucked.
    • Very tastefully done. I missed the "U & I" bracketing you mentioned, but immediately felt the balance of the "in" and mirror of "ui". It's interesting how the dots made a little visual leap over to turn the T's into people elements - a twist that turns a word into a readable graphic. Nice. :-)

      Who designed it?
    • It's a nicely executed update to make the logo more contemporary and relevant to Intuit's customers. And the small touches work - here you have both concepts from "dot the i's and cross the t's" - very clever. Great job, Intuit. There are so many ways this could have been a disaster - for a comparison, take a look at our recent blog post about Italy branding itself in 2007 and the controversy that ensued.

      Ross
    • I think the new logo looks great. Speaking of re-branding, what do you think about Kinko/Fed Ex getting rid of the "Kinko?" Personally I think it's a big mistake. Kinko has been around so long it's become a verb. - Linda
    • The dotted T's grabbed my attention and made me think and I like it.
    • I've stared at this new design for 10 minutes - wanting to dislike it so I can give one of those profound reviews of why they really missed the mark. Can't really do it. I wouldn't have chosen it perhaps because it does seem too cute. But if you're gonna go cute and clever, I am wishing somehow the "i"'s could be leaning / curved at the top as if the t's magnetically stole the dots away. Seems like that would do better that way. If it was only one dot, I can wholeheartedly agree, but the two just seems to forced. So I like, then I dislike, then I like again, and then dislike again. I guess that makes me ambivalent. I looked at it on their website and I guess it doesn't fit well with the logos on their products (big thick bold typeface, i.e., QUICKBOOKS). Wonder if they'll change those as well?
    • I wasn't sure at first if I liked it, but the more I look, the more I like. Probably would have missed the subtleties if you hadn't pointed them out. Thanks!
    • reminded me somewhat of the redesign of Unum's logo. www.unum.com Heard that a Scandinavian outfit charged them $1 million for it.

      Did Intuit use them as well, or just get inspiration from it? Who knows
    • PPC
      Having come from a design and marketing background (ran a signage business) a good logo always resonate and I must say that the intuit logo is really a fine example of graphic design.
    • I'm another one of those who comletely missed the resemblance between the "T"'s and people, I also would never have guessed about the connection between "U" and "I" had you not mentioned it... Guess that's why I'm not a brand consultant...
      However I did think the reflection of the "UI" off the "IN" was rather clever....
    • Somehow the dotted T's distract my eye.
      I see the T's as "upper case" in the middle of a "lower case" word.
      Sorry, but it doesn't really work for me, I see a confusion of upper and lower case rather than a coherent logo.
      This is a shame, because I love the products and scarily, I can go back a an awful long way in that 25 year history!
    • I kept looking at it and wondering why the "t"s were dotted and not the "i"s. I do like the u and i idea (once you explained it to me). Now, if they would fix Quickbooks for Macs...
    • When I see that name Intuit, i'm reminded of that little thing you see on craft items--little circles, usually wooden, called A Round Tuit., buy on and you 'get a round tuit'. I read Intuit as being In to it. It is a restful blue in a marketing time when there is an awful lot of chartreuse
    • Our logo has the dots representing people too. familylink.com. Everyone we ask hates our logo. In fact an executive from Logoworks was at our office yesterday and poked fun of it telling us the logo has got to go (he promised it wasn't because he wanted his company to create a new one for us).

      I think Intuit could have a done a better job. I don't think the little people in their logo matches the image of their brand. The dots as people is so 5 minutes ago. Intuit is a creative company, I wish their logo did a better of showing that.
    • i think i'ts simple like it should be but it reminds me the tmn logo (www.tmn.pt).
    • JB
      I think the logo does a good job of presenting the weakness of Intuit as a company. The last thing I would ever accuse them of is being people or "UI" oriented and I think the logo does a good job of creating that illusion. Lets face it, though expensive, creating a logo is much cheaper than creating the corporate culture or software that actually delivers.
    • First thing I noticed was the two "people". I had an immediate sense of comfort out of it, a sense that this was a program nbot to be overwhelmed by as it was personable. Also I think that I would not be the only one using it. Of course these are from the perspective and approach of what I would expect of someone new to their products or to computing.

      On the downside, it doesn't do a thing to tell me what it is that the company does, other than "intuitive" products.
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