HP's New Logo Is the Awesome One It Never Used (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Earlier today, HP announced the Spectre 13, the world's thinnest laptop. One of the subtle changes HP is making with its recent global brand offensive is to its logo. HP has decided to go with a minimalist design consisting of four slashes making up the "HP" brand name. Previously, "Hewlett-Packard" was written out in full on last year's Spectre x360. HP says it will be using the minimalist logo solely on its premium laptops. Even though the logo has received a makeover, it's not exactly new. This very same mark first surfaced online in a 2011 brand redesign study released by Moving Brands, who HP had hired to develop a new logo and brand identity.

Comments

Ew

[binarylarry]

HP laptops? nasty

Re:Ew

[TheGratefulNet]

lock down that wifi slot! can't have people installing any old compliant and functional pci-e card. gotta make them buy OURS. we'll whitelist only ours, bwahahaha!

evil fucking company. then again, anyone that large is also evil; comes with the territory, it seems ;(

Re:Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a minor consideration next to the fact that HP's build quality and specs are shit.

Re:Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really a minor consideration. It's the fundamental way HP does business - everything from HP only memory to HP only boards to HP only drives.

Shit, shit and shit.

Re:Ew

[KGIII]

Compared to these laptops, mine isn't very thin and it doesn't really look all that fancy - which is a bonus. It's a bit heavy but lighter than it looks like - even with two drives in it. I'm pretty happy with it but it's a "mobile workstation" and not a "laptop." I bought the Titan X4K earlier this year and have been pretty happy with the product. I imagine it's more than what most folks want to pay (I decked it out, including the extras - sans OS, of course) but I think it's worth it.

I am not affiliated. I'm just really happy with it. The price isn't even really all that bad when you consider what you're getting. You don't have to go all out, there are less expensive options.

But, this is the third or fourth one from this company now and I'm pretty sure that I'm never going to buy a laptop from one of the bigger companies ever again. The savings aren't much and I really don't mind spending the extra. The money seems to stay a little closer to home this way. You might be on to something about evil coming with size. But, if it's going to be for myself then I'm probably never going to buy a major brand laptop again. I haven't bought a branded desktop in a long time. I just get white-boxes that are interesting on NewEgg. I then put what I want in 'em though I don't do whole builds any more - I'm too old for that shit. ;-)

Well, too lazy/busy.

Re:Ew

[Neo-Rio-101]

Recent issue:

Friend had a cheap HP desktop. Wanted to upgrade it to 8GB as according to the website, it was specced for that.
Goes to buy compatible RAM as listed on the website.
RAM doesn't work. PC won't boot.
Goes to shop to try all different kinds of RAM, and none of their RAM worked. PC still won't boot.

Calls HP and asks about the RAM.
Told he needs "HP" RAM and HP offers to sell it to him for over $200

Re:Ew

[hcs_$reboot]

It's not really a minor consideration. It's the fundamental way HP does business - everything from HP only memory to HP only boards to HP only drives.

Shit, shit and shit.

isn't this the way Apple is functioning?

Re:Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

My 2014 Lenovo T430 does this as well.

Superfish BS aside, I won't be buying Lenovo again.

Re: Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple tends to push lock-in too, but it's not nearly as bad. I routinely repair / enhance MacBooks and their hardware is 100% compatible with common standards (hard disk, memory, etc.) not to mention very, very well engineered.

I myself use GNU/Linux, because I dislike proprietary software, but I recognize good engineering when I see it.

Re:Ew

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

That is a minor consideration next to the fact that HP's build quality and specs are shit.

I think you misread the logo as "HP" - it's "liji". And I'm convinced soon, they will actually make it look like "shit". Honesty in marketing, great idea.

Re: Ew

[JamesKeane7745]

Try upgrading an SSD on the early 2015 macbook pro... No third parties have made one compatible yet.

Re:Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

Aaaand Lenovo...

There's several vendors I won't buy from again at this point. We've now listed THREE of them.

Re: Ew

[omnichad]

100% compatible with common standards

Not quite. OS X refuses to enable TRIM on a non-Apple SSD and you need 3rd-party software to make it work.

Re:Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

The Titan X4K is a cute little laptop with somewhat decent specs, but a bit overpriced considering the flimsy plastic build.

Re: Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. They've enabled it for 3rd party SSDs, now only blocking it for drives known to have borked TRIM commands.

Re:Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

Long ago I had an HP desktop that had a shitty Intel IGP. I wanted to install a new video card. When I opened the case there was no AGP slot, but there were contacts for one. Apparently HP thought it was worth it to save 3 cents by omitting the AGP slot for a PC that cost over $1200.

I ended up having to replace the motherboard in order to upgrade my GPU. This made HP-supplied Windows XP DRM spaz out and lock me out of my own data. I called Microsoft and they said they couldn't help me because vendors like HP are given a block of license keys for which Microsoft didn't have access. I called HP and got someone with a very heavy Eastern Indian accent who claimed that I would have to pay $100 for them to provide me with a license key to unlock my PC. Before paying, I point-blank verified "So I pay you this money and you will give me a license key to validate/verify/genuinise/unlock my PC, right?" Response: "Yes." I pay the money and then they start rattling off instructions for how to *FACTORY RESTORE* my PC, which I had previous ALREADY TOLD THEM I knew how to do but was avoiding because I wanted my data. Furious, I demanded my money back as they had welshed on the argeement. They caved and issued a refund (which I verified with my bank).

I tried to do everything the "legit" way, but in the end I just cracked Windows XP and went on my merry way with my new motherboard and GPU. Ever since then, I don't buy HP and I only use pirated copies of Windows because they don't have problems like that.

Re:Ew

[operagost]

The previous line of Elitebooks (the ones with the silver cases) was quite good. Solidly made, and reliable. This line, with a flimsy feeling plastic case, no CD-ROM drive, and no latch for the lid... not so much.

Re: Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously?

Sounds like FUD to me, boys.

Re: Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

Just boot any Linux Live-CD, backup the data off the windows partitions, and then install Linux.

Done.

Entire thing done in an hour or two.

Re:Ew

[phorm]

I remember dealing with those issues. My HP laptop had a PITA broadcomm 802.11b wifi NIC which at the time needed ndiswrapper in Linux. I wanted to install either an Intel or a Atheros 802.11g NIC, but the damn laptop wouldn't take any non-HP cards.

Re: Ew

[Anonymous Coward]

That would have defeated the initial point of upgrading my GPU so I could run games.

Re: Ew

[omnichad]

It can be manually enabled in the newer versions. Which is not a sane default, especially when there is no easy way to notice.

Re:Ew

[kilodelta]

Understand completely about both HP and Lenovo. Both produce POC machines.

Re: Ew

[tlhIngan]

Try upgrading an SSD on the early 2015 macbook pro... No third parties have made one compatible yet.

Well, that's just a supply issue - NVMe/PCIe SSDs aren't a terribly big part of the market right now either. I mean, you can buy a PCIe SSD for your PC and chances are it won't boot from it. So things are still in flux for NVMe/PCIe SSDs. Apple of course, controls the entire chain so they can make their OS boot from PCIe/NVMe easily enough, and the performance is easily triple that of SATA3 (1.5GB/sec vs SATA's 540MB/sec), which is why Apple went with it.

Of course, as one of the few computers on the market supporting NVMe/PCIe, there just isn't a big enough market for most providers to bother. Even M2 SSDs aren't as easy to find, ignoring the fact that M2 allows for it to be on either the SATA (slower) or PCIe (faster) busses.

So it's hard to find a third party replacement because most third parties aren't making them. Those that do charge more.

100% compatible with common standards

Not quite. OS X refuses to enable TRIM on a non-Apple SSD and you need 3rd-party software to make it work.

It can be manually enabled in the newer versions. Which is not a sane default, especially when there is no easy way to notice.

Well, the user could easily stick in an SSD with a buggy TRIM implementation, so if the OS enabled it, it would corrupt itself and the user's files.

Apple enables it automatically on their SSDs because they verify that TRIM works on their hardware. Since there are tons of other SSDs out there, Apple couldn't test them all and the disable TRIM because it's the safest option that will protect the user's data.

El Capitan added the ability to enable it natively in the OS but with big caveats that there could be data loss, so it displays a nice warning.

Samsung drives are fine, but there are dozens of others not as reliable.

Re: Ew

[LifesABeach]

FUD? I'm wondering if the H1B zombies that programmed'em can afford them?

Re:Ew

[ncc74656]

I remember dealing with those issues. My HP laptop had a PITA broadcomm 802.11b wifi NIC which at the time needed ndiswrapper in Linux. I wanted to install either an Intel or a Atheros 802.11g NIC, but the damn laptop wouldn't take any non-HP cards.

Had that happen once. I made do with a CardBus WiFi card until the native Broadcom driver (b43?) started to work. ndiswrapper never worked for me.

OTOH, another HP notebook (maybe a slightly older one) shipped with a wireless NIC with no WPA support...kinda useless nowadays. I was able to swap in a newer NIC scavenged from a broken Dell (IIRC) without issue. Maybe this whitelisting is somewhat selective as to where it was applied.

Re:Ew

[toddestan]

My experience with those Elitebooks is that they were garbage. The first problem is that they were total dogs performance wise. I'm not sure what the problem was exactly, but you'd get one totally specced out and the thing would just be slow and sluggish and feel like it was several years older than it really was. The second problem is that they just didn't hold up well either. Lots of failures and 3-4 years and they'd be dead. Usually just out of warranty and deemed not worth repairing. Granted, that's about when most people would be wanting an upgrade anyway, but a Thinkpad will keep working for as long as you're willing to put up with it.

Re: Ew

[JamesKeane7745]

Read the comment properly - the standards changed again on the new MBPs - can't upgrade it yet.

How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much does an advertisement like this cost on Slashdot? I'm just curious...

Re: How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Must not be too much since it's on the front page twice.

Re:How much?

[supremebob]

It seems like HP got a new social media PR department to go with this new logo. I saw this story several times on Facebook, Engadget, and Reddit as well.

But, seriously, it's just a weird logo on a laptop that's too thin to be practical. Big deal. I don't want to carry around damn dongle to use an Ethernet or HDMI port!

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

... But, seriously, it's just a weird logo ...

A logo should convey something about the company that promotes it. It should be an identifiable mark that clearly points you toward a specific company.

Some of them are historical, some are symbolic, some evoke emotion, some represent their product.

This one is remarkable in the sense that it does none of the things a logo does. It is similar to a HP logo for those who don't want to be identified as working on a HP product. Three carefully placed horizontal lines (perhaps not even fully connecting) would go MILES in letting me know these are letters.

I have done calligraphy for years, and the wrong curve in the wrong place will make a person misidentify a letter, even if the rest of the letter is in place correctly. Any font that completely destroys horizontal queues is not odd, it is stupid.

HP might as well have made their logo ". _ ."

Re:How much?

[sunami88]

It seems like HP got a new social media PR department to go with this new logo. I saw this story several times on Facebook, Engadget, and Reddit as well.

Title:
Advertising HP Businesses News Hardware Technology HP's New Logo Is the Awesome One It Never Used

So I went to Wikipedia...
Hewlett-Packard, Founded January 1, 1939; 77 years ago

I'm not going to start screaming "OOOOH SLASHVERTISEMENT" because the story really has made the rounds everywhere, it's just a little disingenuous to suggest that the logo from a design contest in 2011 is the logo they "Never Used". Definitely some kind of PR spin.

Re:How much?

[whipslash]

It costs: the time it takes for a user to post, and the time it takes to get voted up in the firehose. Don't like it? Be more active in the firehose.

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

cues, not queues.

Re:How much?

[TheGratefulNet]

bored overpaid execs who just don't earn their keep anymore - THEY are the ones always who want to change a perfectly good company logo.

sgi had a great logo. the idiots changed it. hp had a very long-running and classic logo. they changed it several times.

I was at DEC and for some odd reason, they kept their nice, working logo for, well, the entire company history! apple has kept theirs mostly the same, too, over their history.

seems some companies hire marketing people who just don't offer anything of real value, they try to justify their jobs and do 'something' but usually they just create crap.

I understand that when a restaurant has a food poisoning and goes out of business (just a name change, really) to refresh itself, I get why that is done. but with hp? ok, the more I think about it, the more I guess I just answered my own question.

Re:How much?

[93 Escort Wagon]

... Three carefully placed horizontal lines (perhaps not even fully connecting) would go MILES in letting me know these are letters. ...

I rather like it (still not a fan of the current company, though). But, given their target audience, it might not be the best choice. I learned long ago that technical people are generally the wrong folks to expect to grok an abstract design.

Re:How much?

[dontbemad]

But, seriously, it's just a weird logo on a laptop that's too thin to be practical. Big deal. I don't want to carry around damn dongle to use an Ethernet or HDMI port!

Well, it certainly is a good thing that you aren't the target demographic, huh?

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, i'm confused when fiji water started to make computers. i'll tweet them on my facebox ubers.

Re:How much?

[KGIII]

It's not going to make me buy it but I don't hate it. I'm not normally a fan of the minimalist craze and I'm not a product/brand zealot so I don't really care what logo is on what, as long as it's not gaudy looking or chintzy looking. This isn't a bad logo or anything. I've seen much, much worse. It doesn't scream "copied from another company and a fad" to me. It's almost elegant, it reminds me a bit of ballerinas.

Yeah, that last joint was probably one too many. Still, it's not an abomination. I'm guessing (I've only made it this far) there's at least one person outraged about it. If not here than one of the many other sites is bound to have some fan screaming angrily at clouds. It usually happens when people experience change, someone's bound to hate it. Then again, there are probably a few people for whom this is the best thing ever and are now hell bent on getting one - just for the logo. As it's only on their higher end products, they'll be able to tie their identity to yet another brand. Yay?

I suppose they'll be forced to like it, even if it's junk, as affirmation is a strong desire in some folks. Meh, it generated some buzz. That means the HP PR folks did their job well and the design team appears to have not done too poorly. We've seen how many logos come and go over the years? Someone above mentioned Apple but they've changed a lot too. Windows? That's changed a number of times. Opera, my browser of choice, changed recently. That actually didn't bug me but they also changed the text "Opera" (on the button) to "Menu." That actually was off for me. It's not easy to explain but I didn't hate it and I know it's a trivial thing but it's like I had to relearn where the button was. I've since figured out that I can (I think) change it back by setting a flag. I'd do that but then I'd be confused again. ;-) I'm acclimated to it now. It was visually distracting and such a trivial thing but I noticed it immediately and it bugged me for a few days before I adjusted.

I want to say that even Slashdot's changed their logo a couple of times. I seem to recall that the logo was a bit different at one point and that the faveicon.ico was different. I'm guessing that, if they did, there were some unhappy folks. Seems to happen with most any change but I don't recollect any outrage. I think maybe the beta was enough to make me repress a few memories. *nods*

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Us tech people had no issue with the abstract "path forms a cube" logo of SGI. Nor did we have any issue with Packard Bell's abstract face logo. Gateway's cow logo didn't fool us one bit. Heck, we don't really think Apple's logo is a literally rainbow colored Mackintosh. The highly stylized Golden Gate Bridge of Cisco doesn't confuse us.

If you like it, fine. To each their own, but if one were to remove the horizontal lines, then HP's logo would be "-=" which would be just as unreadable as this four line alternative.

The difference between the abstract logos I've presented as good and HP's new logo has to do with identification. The items I'm holding up as examples are distinctive enough that one recognizes them as symbolic. A few horizontal lines is not sufficiently symbolic to differentiate between the tally mark for 4. In fact, this is barely differentiated from Cisco's logo, despite the sharper corners.

And don't dis technical people. If you spent half the time with designers that I have spent, you would understand that good designers are very technical. I'd wager that every detail of those four lines have been contemplated to maximize the pleasing effect upon the eye. It's just not a pleasing effect that gives away enough hints that we are talking about a company, let alone HP.

If vertical bars make great logos, then after we have half-a-dozen companies arrange their vertical bars with different corners, baselines and heights, no two companies would ever be confused for each other! (obvious sarcasm at work)

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

A logo should convey something about the company that promotes it.

That is what the designer thinks.
In reality we think more about the logo depending on what we feel about the company than the other way around.

If you want me to think good of a logotype:
1) Don't change it, it has to be recognizable as the one you always used.
2) Do good stuff. If I recall that good things comes with that logotype I will think it is a good logotype.

Re:How much?

[war4peace]

Fun fact: if you rotate the traditional "HP" logo 180 degrees, it becomes "DY".

Re: How much?

[Maritz]

Yeah. This is an article about a LOGO on a fucking laptop. Unreal.

Re:How much?

[TheRaven64]

I just took a look at the firehose, and every single one of the posts there is spam. Perhaps some automated filtering is needed.

Re:How much?

[sunami88]

I checked all my HTML tags, re-read everything a few times... But did I double check the title I pasted in? Noooooooo. How I managed to copy the tags for the story at the same time is anyone's guess.

Re:How much?

[whipslash]

There is actually a lot of automated filtering going already. It's a fine line between blocking legitimate posts and making sure we can filter spam. The more users interact withe firehose, the better the content on Slashdot will be.

Re: How much?

[LifesABeach]

Funny thing, the current /. DA editor puts another article in about the same laptop at the bottom of today's stuff. When will the HP H1B zombies engineer a 16 PITA-Byte RAM laptop? Or wasn't that on their final exam?

Re:How much?

[Trogre]

You're right. Computer users are no longer in that company's target demographic.

Re:How much?

[TheRaven64]

Two observations. First, there were, literally, around a hundred posts that were obvious spam (i.e. not even pretending to be news). There needs to be some mechanism to kill it easily. Perhaps people who have mod points are allowed to kill one firehose article per day (or even have one pop up on the front page and be asked 'is this spam?' - not is this good or not, just should this be rejected).

Second, it's hard to find the firehose. The only link to it is in the bar at the top that contains stupid messages that everyone ignores and it's only there sometimes. I had to refresh the front page several times before a link showed up. That's not a great way of encouraging participation. Again, why not pop one of the firehose stories onto the front page at random and ask people to vote for / against it?

Re:How much?

[whipslash]

We've figured out the spam issue so it should be fixed hopefully today. Also, in terms of the link, there's a link in the main nav that's always present. I've noticed on smaller browser windows though, it disappears. We are going to fix that as well.

Re:How much?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like HP got a new social media PR department to go with this new logo. I saw this story several times on Facebook, Engadget, and Reddit as well.

But, seriously, it's just a weird logo on a laptop that's too thin to be practical. Big deal. I don't want to carry around damn dongle to use an Ethernet or HDMI port!

How often do you actually use a ethernet or HDMI port? This very same complaint came up with the Macbook Air, these laptops are intended to be portable machines. The amount of times that you are going to be wanting to plug them into an external monitor or wired network is going to be low enough that having a USB-C dock sitting in a drawer is not going to be an issue.

Re:How much?

[TheRaven64]

I was going to reply to say that it isn't there, but then I discovered that 'smaller browser windows' includes basically anything that isn't a maximised window. If your browser is under about 1050 pixels wide, it disappears. That's significantly wider than a browser window needs to be for line wrapping to hit optimal readability on most web sites.

bird

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else think the logo looks showing the middle finger?

Re:bird

[NaCh0]

Looks more like a downward trending bar graph to me. Makes sense if you've ever had to work with HP.

An ad

[kamapuaa]

I don't get it. Is this sponsored content?

Hate to say it but I think I agree with all the crazy anti-Windows people that pollute this site. No use getting an expensive windows computer that can't play games. Windows is only if you're making a game machine or want to buy one of the $200 laptops.

Re:An ad

[KGIII]

No, it's not sponsored content. Whipslash/Logan posted above your post but after you posted. I don't think they do a whole lot of sponsored content here. At least not that I've noticed - though I think Dice did some. I'm not sure why everyone seems to jump to that conclusion. So, if you don't mind entertaining me, why is it that you leaped to that conclusion? It's not like there's a recent history of sponsored content. The new overlords are pretty damned open and, seemingly, honest. You can just ask 'em if you want.

Re:An ad

[imidan]

I'm not sure why everyone seems to jump to that conclusion.

Well, it seems like 'slashvertisement' is the automatic cry that people raise when a product or service that they don't personally like or use is mentioned in a post. And anyone who disagrees with that judgment is a 'paid shill.'

For what it's worth, I like the new logo. I don't think it's either particularly necessary or helpful, but I don't have any problem with it.

Re:An ad

[thegarbz]

Windows is only if you're making a game machine or want to buy one of the $200 laptops.

Or want a computer that doesn't actively battle the user every step of the way to do basic tasks while at the same time not wanting a mac.

Re:An ad

[drinkypoo]

No use getting an expensive windows computer that can't play games. Windows is only if you're making a game machine or want to buy one of the $200 laptops.

No, Windows is used to do real work, too. It's still the dominant CAD platform, for example. Basically all automotive software is for Windows, including tuning and programming. Seems to still be the dominant platform in GIS, in spite of most of those tools being available for Windows now, presumably we can chalk that up to inertia and legacy software. I'm sure there are numerous other industries where Windows is the de facto standard.

Re:An ad

[Hognoxious]

No, it's not sponsored content. Whipslash/Logan posted above your post but after you posted.

If it was the case that for X bucks you can get a [non]-story posted, and if you were him, would you just come out and admit it?

Re:An ad

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is sponsored. Nobody besides the company management and marketing teams care what their logo looks like. Yet it is so common for eg. the marketing team to blame company logo or colour scheme for their lack of sales..

#slownewsday

[Anonymous Coward]

A story about an old rejected logo getting reused is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

HP Logo Police chief must have retired.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I used to work for a software company that was an OEM vendor to HP. The Logo police declared on the top left corner of the window, we should have the logo. So we created it that way. Then we created a cool animation that will "spin" the logo, as though it has been etched on a glass plate spinning on a vertical axis. It would spin if you click on that corner. A small inconsequential easter egg.

No! The logo police came down on it like a ton of bricks. The aspect ratio of the log does not match the company spec during the animation. They made us pull the release candidate and rebuild the whole software.

We had the last laugh though, we spun off the OEM software under our own brand, and HP competed with us, then spun off its software division as Agilent, and then we beat Agilent in that business. They eventually sold their customer base who used the competing version created by them to us and exited the business. Anyone who spent that much time enforcing logo display deserved to go out of business.

Re:HP Logo Police chief must have retired.

[Xabraxas]

Every large company has branding standards and most are very strict about how they are used. This is not limited to HP.

Re:HP Logo Police chief must have retired.

[KGIII]

Shit, I was an MVP award winner with Microsoft for about a half-dozen years. This was ages ago but they were VERY anal retentive about what logo could be used, where it was to be used, and how you used it and presented it - you signed both an agreement to do so (or you didn't get the award) and an NDA to not discuss the rules. I am, kind of obviously, no longer receiving that award every year. I haven't participated in the program since about 2006.

Ah well... They did give us an insanely awesome version of MSDN but I just stopped answering all the questions, gave the site away, and bought my own MSDN subscription. Then I switched to using Linux exclusively. It made sense to do so. I'd switched from Unix to Windows and had kept a partition with Linux on it around since the 90s. It's good to switch things up once in a while. These days, I'm kind of lost when I sit in front of a Windows computer. I'd mostly stuck with Vista at the end but I used 7 for a while. I've only touched 10 once and that was confusing and everything seemed out of place. It took me a minute to remember "MSCONFIG." and then to remember GPEDIT even existed.

Re:HP Logo Police chief must have retired.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to interrupt your story about how cool you are, but...

Anyone who spent that much time enforcing logo display deserved to go out of business.

...perhaps anyone who hires people who spend more effort playing games with the company logo against company policy, instead of working on their job, may have problems down the road.

Re:HP Logo Police chief must have retired.

[Anonymous Coward]

...perhaps anyone who hires people who spend more effort playing games with the company logo against company policy, instead of working on their job, may have problems down the road.

That might be one of the problems.

we spun off the OEM software under our own brand

Outsourcing to subcontractors that take the knowledge they get during the project and then competes with you might also be a problem.
I'm surprised HP didn't get a clause in the contract to prevent that.

Re:HP Logo Police chief must have retired.

[thegarbz]

Anyone who spent that much time enforcing logo display deserved to go out of business.

You have just described the entire fortune 500 portfolio. When companies get to the point where their logo is valuable or their products are worth forging there are good reasons to enforce incredibly strict logo rules. This can be to:
a) show consistency
b) drive a certain message (i.e. our branding standards include which colours can cover which part of a page and a based on psychological studies of how people react to colours).
c) ensure that the brand is advertised in a consistent way; which ties into:
d) fight forging, when you're always 100% sure of exactly how a product is supposed to look it makes it easier to spot the fakes, especially since the fakes often make minor modifications to the logo to avoid falling afoul of trademark laws which are about the only laws that apply properly in much of the world.

I once had to redesign a product because the printing proof showed a single colour of the logo slightly differently due to a supplier changing printers. And when I say slightly differently it was resolved by increasing the yellow colour by 2 values (out of 256). I couldn't tell the difference side by side between the printed copies but the brand team could.

Re:HP Logo Police chief must have retired.

[houghi]

Logo and branding are VERY specific and related closer to trademark then to copyright. There are always forms and papers on how the logo should look, what colors must be used, what if it is in black and white and a lot of other things.

It is like using different glasses for different beers. This is NOT to have a different taste, this is so people see what beer you are drinking.

e.g. Stella Artois is just an average beer and in Belgium they compete with themselves (Jupiler). So what did they do to make Stella a premium beer? They changed the glass. Not the beer, the way the glass looked.

So perhaps they deserve to go out of business in your opinion, but most ikely they wont (for that reason) because they understand how important branding is and apparently you don't.

Re:HP Logo Police chief must have retired.

[stealth_finger]

Logo and branding are VERY specific and related closer to trademark then to copyright. There are always forms and papers on how the logo should look, what colors must be used, what if it is in black and white and a lot of other things.

We have one of them that states very specifically in quite strong terms when the business name is written down each word MUST start with a capital letter.....the logo is all lowercase /facepalm

Re:HP Logo Police chief must have retired.

[tommeke100]

They marketed Stella as being Premium French beer.

Give me a break

[Anonymous Coward]

A multibillion dollar behemoth's new logo is 'awesome'. Truly Stuff That Matters.

Re:Give me a break

[suupaabaka]

Honestly, I think the whole point of Slashdot is to incite discussion. You get a lot of interesting insights from discussion topics that are only tangentially related to the opening post. As a nerd who cares about stuff that matters, I'm personally not averse to articles like this appearing in the feed because half the time, there are cool little tidbits from readers buried in the comments.

Re:Give me a break

[KGIII]

Yup. I really don't much care what the subject of the article is. It's not like we read it or were even really talking about it. There are threads and sub-threads and meta comments galore. I read Slashdot for the comments - which are generally pretty good. If anyone thinks that quality of comments has gone downhill, I suggest you take a little while to browse the archives. We were never "good." We've always just been pretty good.

A good example is to trace back VMWare (through the search) to the first article where they announced it. Read the comments in that. No Slashdot, you were never good. Not even close. Interesting? Yes. Good? No, not really. "That will never catch on." "For that price, I'll just dual boot." "That's impossible, no way you can run Windows 95 and have another OS on top of it, the file system won't allow it!" Those sorts of comments, they amuse me. I've dug the link out a dozen times but it's easy to find. Just search and keep going back in the pages by changing the number in the URL. You'll find it. I think it's technically second to oldest for the "best" of them.

I don't care about trademarks

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers are still big calculators to me, despite if it is made on Japan or China or whatever is your favoritte place in the world. So, I just trip and the retards use the concept to search for trends, huh? I want to be paid for that. I mean, I want to be paid for calling You assholes by retards, because as far I know, I can just avoid anyone who doesn't seems to be a righteous person to me. Yes, I'm talking with You, "police" officers, before You spend millions of dollars paying your slaves to remind me everyday that a fucked up girl died in a terrorist act.

Typical HP. It leaves a lot out

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, Apple has a bite out, but it's still an apple. This, this is LSD talking.

omg

[Anonymous Coward]

Omg shut up you absolute pile of shitcunts.

Fails the "stuff that matters" test

[AmazingRuss]

A logo change for a company nobody cares about anymore is like don't care squared.

I hope they paid well.

Re:Fails the "stuff that matters" test

[msauve]

HP isn't HP. Keysight is the real HP (which was built upon test equipment).

Re:Fails the "stuff that matters" test

[Anonymous Coward]

Stuff that mattered?
|d|i|g|i|t|a|l|

Re:Fails the "stuff that matters" test

[Bite The Pillow]

That logo is awesomesauceballs. Minimalist as all hell, but recognizable like yo mommas back.

But it is as newsworthy as the ass I just dropped.

I liked the link to hpes logo, which is boring like picking your crack and not finding any Klingons. The (tit)tees are crammed together for the first time in history! Epicleventy!!!

Wait, CEOs spend time on this shit instead of making a business that doesn't nurse butt. There's your news, and stock tip.

Re:Fails the "stuff that matters" test

[dargaud]

Well at work we just went from all Dell laptops and HP desktops/servers to all new HP laptops and Dell desktops/servers (don't ask...). So my next laptop arriving next week will be an HP (my Latitude E6410 has served me well and is still in great shape so will go to an underling). But all those negative comments are disheartening... C:-(

Re:Fails the "stuff that matters" test

[orledrat]

I vote for changing it to "Stuff Those Matters!", who's with me?

Re:Fails the "stuff that matters" test

[toddestan]

It's too bad that HP kept the calculators division. Agilent/Keysight might have done something more interesting with them.

Re:Fails the "stuff that matters" test

[AmazingRuss]

Stuff it!

The bird

[jdavidb]

If I look at it upside down it looks sort of like it is flipping me off...

Re:The bird

[DewDude]

Well.....don't you know about the bird?

Re:The bird

[TheGratefulNet]

peter griffin, here we come!

Re:The bird

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, upside-down and left-to-right it's middle finger, thumbs down!

Re:The bird

[vandamme]

HP used upside down nameplates to sell their cheaper test equipment under the Dymec brand. So maybe they could do that again.

and Cisco's opinion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be interesting if goes to trial

im sure the marketing team woke up for it.

[nimbius]

upbeat marketing droneSo, Fiorina dropped out of the race without a snowballs chance in hell, I got great parking this morning, and we just invented a laptop thinner than the christgods at apple....
PHB: hey we need to logo the new brochures for third quarter what should we-
upbeat marketing drone: the one that kicks more ass than Popeye on bath salts.
PHB Ok steve we'll use...the lines...but honestly i swear to god no more coffee for you.

Carly is a scumbag...

[Anonymous Coward]

and this is more proof.

Re: Carly is a scumbag...

[Anonymous Coward]

All of those republicans are.

That's HP? Probably wouldn't have guessed

[darthsilun]

I can see it, but only because I knew what was coming.

If I hadn't known, I'd probably still be wondering.

Epic fail IMO.

Re:That's HP? Probably wouldn't have guessed

[CanadianMacFan]

So it suits the company perfectly then.

Re:That's HP? Probably wouldn't have guessed

[Quirkz]

I remember with the old logo sometimes seeing it upside down and wondering what a DY was. This one is still susceptible to that, in addition to looking like a fence, or the rain, or someone being beamed up to a space ship.

Re:That's HP? Probably wouldn't have guessed

[thegarbz]

The point of a logo is not to instantly recognise the company, it's to drive a brand. The recognition comes after circulation. Take a car logo for instance. Many people have no idea that the Toyota symbol actually spells the letters Toyota over each other, or that the Subaru logo is based on the constellation by the same name in Japanese based on the pleiades. In either case though after a brief period people recognise the logo and associate it with a company. Or what do a horse and a bull say about a car anyway?

Their only fail would be not promoting the logo. If their high-end laptops don't get wide spread use then the association may struggle.

Re:That's HP? Probably wouldn't have guessed

[omnichad]

Toyota symbol actually spells the letters Toyota over each other,

This is a new one on me. But I only recently learned of the arrow in the FedEx logo, even more recently the spoon. The Tostitos logo has two guys dipping chips in salsa within the 'tit' of the logo. And the new Baskin Robbins logo has the number 31 hidden in the BR.

These are all things I appreciate and enjoy.

Re:That's HP? Probably wouldn't have guessed

[thegarbz]

Lol you just blew my mind. How could I not have seen the 31!

MIT Press

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like the logo for MIT Press.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Press

Re:MIT Press

[KGIII]

Stylistically, it reminded me of the MIT alumni logo. I use that as my avatar sometimes. It's not that I'm overly proud to be alumni, it's that I'm not very creative.

Re:MIT Press

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, you seem pretty proud.

Ugly as shit

[nctritech]

That's all: this logo is ugly as shit. It doesn't even look like HP. It looks like a part of a postal bar code got stepped on. This minimalism thing is getting really out of hand.

Re:Ugly as shit

[Anonymous Coward]

This minimalism thing is getting really out of hand.

Indeed. Reduce minimalism!

Re:Ugly as shit

[stealth_finger]

If you want a ugly logo look up the new cbbc one. Unless you're in the uk and have little kids you probably won't have come across it

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media...

I'll let you guess which is which.

Re:Ugly as shit

[stealth_finger]

This minimalism thing is getting really out of hand.

Indeed. Reduce minimalism!

But I thought less was more?

Thumbs up

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a great logo, sort of like the Paul Rand IBM logo brought up to date.

Of course, great logo != great company. But it beats having a boring or shitty logo.

Re:Thumbs up

[default luser]

That's a great logo, sort of like the Paul Rand IBM logo brought up to date.

Of course, great logo != great company. But it beats having a boring or shitty logo.

Are you high? The Rand 1972 IBM logo has 8 lines of resolution FOR EACH LETTER. You can clearly make the details out.

This stupid HP logo has TWO lines of resolution for each letter. That's no-longer distinctive, it's just overly clever bullshit that will piss-off your average idiot user.

Note that your average idiot user also includes every PHB who fills out the IT order sheets. A pretentious logo like this will be an automatic turnoff and result in cancellation of the order.

Wolverine made the logo?

[steadph]

Looks like it...

Re:Wolverine made the logo?

[TheGratefulNet]

actually, they used a dot matrix printer - but it was so old, some of the pins were stuck.

"hey, look at this! maybe we can salvage this into our new logo!"

Re:Wolverine made the logo?

[Hognoxious]

Done on a laser, but their inks so expensive even they can't afford it.

Turd, meet gold paint

[Iamthecheese]

I've seen several stories obviously pushed by one social media organization or another not quite make it to the front page. I think out new overlords are just a little less savvy about preventing manipulation.

Upside-Down

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you flip it upside-down it is DQ for Dairy Queen. ... really dumb.

Re:Upside-Down

[6Yankee]

I have an HP laptop for work, and the easiest way to tell it's the right way around when I put it on the docking station is that it says "dy" in the middle instead of "hp".

Not sure why

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't quite put my finger on why but I hate looking at that new logo. Zero style. Zero sexiness. It looks like whoever chose this design was a overpaid suit with zero artistic talent.

The HP enterprise logo

[Neo-Rio-101]

Does anyone care to guess the million dollar sum HP spent on their HPE logo?

Reminder: The HPE logo is a green rectangle.

LIP?

[Anonymous Coward]

The new logo is very nice, clean and minimalistic, but just look at the LIP watches logo from last century - somehow VERY similar.

Is it just me?

[Ilgaz]

I wonder if they are trying to hide the fact that the owner use a HP brand laptop?

I am not trying to joke here as my older computer was Lenovo and current one is HP. Both chosen with the criteria of being Debian compatible (chips) and I will not be running Apple in Starbucks for example.

If they are ashamed of being themselves and try to hide it, they have a bigger problem.

Iiji! Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that the new Iiji laptop? Oh, it's just an HP, never mind.

Minimalistic....

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon you will no longer be able to see anything without a VR headset that superimpose some actual information on the minimalistic designs.
"No, less contrast, you can still read it!"
"No, remove the borders, you can still tell its a button!"
"No, remove the underline, you can still tell its a shortcut!"
"No, remove the color under the icon text, you can still use a wallpaper!"
"No, tere is less then 75% of the screen empty, hide more functions!"
and now, the final frontier:
"No, simplify the logo more! There is still a way for a person who does not know what its is supposed to be to understand it!"

Ugliest Logo I've ever seen.

[DougReed]

Nobody will know what it is unless you tell them, and even then some people will not be able to see it. .. but maybe the laptop will be so dreadful nobody will ever NEED to see the logo.

Re:Ugliest Logo I've ever seen.

[BlackPignouf]

Indeed. It could be hp, lip, liyi, lgi, lizi, or upside-down, ily, ihz, ilg, dy, dz, ...

Re:Ugliest Logo I've ever seen.

[lfourrier]

just look att the logo of lip :
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lip

Re:Ugliest Logo I've ever seen.

[BlackPignouf]

Very informative, thanks.

Classic Shell

[Anonymous Coward]

The more people install it, the sooner sanity will return to Redmond.

Also, have a firewall which stop the Information Leak if you use it privately.

For How Long ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess they already plan to Split The Atom Further. Keysight will be split into Peephull and Analitech, according to the latest rumors.

Re:For How Long ?

[stealth_finger]

I guess they already plan to Split The Atom Further. Keysight will be split into Peephull and Analitech, according to the latest rumors.

Anal iTech, is that apple's new thing? Sounds sexy

Muha

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ever worked for HP, you would think that Hillary Leftham Clinton would be their chief ideologist. At HP it is all about empowering these minorities of sexual perverts, women who confuse the home with the workplace and the like.

They bought this "progressive" nonsense so hard that they forgot who made their company great: White men who devoted their lives to improving some extremely advanced technology just a bit more. As in "pcb-scale atomic clock".

Now they have spit on this Evil White man and the Evilers have moved on to Google, Intel and other competitors who run circles around this assortment of disoriented amateurs called "HP".

I really like it

[Anonymous Coward]

even if it lacks really thin horizontal line so that you can actually read "hp"

the old one really lacks personality.

Very

[Vlijmen Fileer]

"liji"???
Yup. How awesome.

Not very original

[Davoid]

That is not a very original logo. The MIT Press has one just like it (same "font") and they have had it for decades. See http://mitpress.mit.edu/

My last laptop was an HP

[Anonymous Coward]

And it was such a garbage machine that i'll probably never buy anything ever again that has an HP logo.

Pretty smart of them to change it.

Wouldve been smarter to stop making shit computers, but who am i to judge?

HP = crap. Avoid.

[cpotoso]

HP = crap. Avoid. And by the way, just stop this slashvertising. It is getting boring.

All together (and altogether) now...

[edittard]

Everybody sing along ...

Re:Ugly as

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. The entire trend of the last 30 years to logos that are brain-dead boring is a shame. Logos used to be art; now they are right-angled chicken scratches. I know, I know, the art department made us do it so the logo will reproduce well on paper, canvas and as pixels, without distorting or suffering the jaggies. So sorry everyone, but now all the world's monochrome blocky logos look the same. Your logo no longer stands out...

bup

[mwn3d]

Anyone else read the logo as "bup"? Just me? OK.

What was wrong with the other one?

[Mr_Silver]

I'm no brand or design guru (like most people here on Slashdot) but I did rather like the other logo they had on the HP Spectre 13.

Wonder why they didn't go with that one?

Re:What was wrong with the other one?

[PPH]

I think they want people to forget about their engineering and instrumentation origins.

Re:What was wrong with the other one?

[vandamme]

They have.

I'm returning ...

[PPH]

... this 'dy' brand laptop. The hinges are on the wrong side.

muriel cooper is rolling in her grave

[Anonymous Coward]

hp has to steal the mit press logo, can't make their own

what a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

they understand how important branding is

oh yes, what great names:

HPUX - a pox on you and your computer

OpenVMS - for the most closed-up OS ever

HP-48 - this is a calculator, but how would anyone know that?

MIT Press logo

[astrobase_go]

Looks sort of similar to their logo.

Re:MIT Press logo

[orgelspieler]

Or the new IEEE Spectrum logo

pump that stock, uhn UHN!

[Anonymous Coward]

The four slashes are for all the jobs they've slashed.

Re:pump that stock, uhn UHN!

[LifesABeach]

One slash per 10,000?

Dymec is back? And they're making laptops???

[Ellis D. Tripp]

At one point, HP had a division called Dymec, which manufactured custom test gear, early digital data acquisition systems, and similar niche market stuff. Their logo was simply the HP logo of the day, turned upside down so it became "DY"...

http://hpmemoryproject.org/new...

http://www.hpmuseum.net/divisi...

https://www.hpplotter.co.uk/wo...

Holy Poo

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy Poo

HP or DQ

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Dairy Queen laptops

Wow, who cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does HP think this will spur new sales of their crappy laptops.

brostep

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect a lawsuit from Skrillex over the logo..
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=skrillex+logo&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Is the logo really that awesome though?

[The_Revelation]

I think its fair to say a good logo doesn't read upside down. This one does - it comes from a company called dy, or dg. Its mysterious as to why all social media is calling this logo 'awesome' when it is '50% functional'