Employees at OpenAI Offended by

the Company’s Horrible New Logo

 

 

This is really stupid.

It’s likely that you have observed the trend of many businesses these days removing their logos in favor of something more “minimalist.” To the dismay of several employees, OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, looks to be taking the same route.

According to sources cited by Fortune, OpenAI recently presented its continuing redesign initiatives during a company-wide meeting. New typefaces were among them, but the most notable addition was a new logo a big, hardly noticeable black “O.” (There aren’t any images yet, but it’s easy to visualize.)

Many employees of the corporation didn’t like this development, and some of them voiced their dislike in public. Not only did the new logo seem to be lacking in creativity, but other people saw it as downright “ominous.” Perhaps it’s the glaring emptiness left by the ring that now stands in the place of the company’s signature geometric flower. Merely an estimate.

Even though it’s now just a proposed logo, OpenAI‘s genuine consideration of utilizing it illustrates the company’s foundering efforts to solidify its brand in light of its failing product names.

Completely new

According to Fortune, OpenAI‘s unique flower symbol, which is intended to suggest “precision, potential, and optimism,” has drastically changed from its previous design. It is difficult to see any of those being represented in the new one.

Indeed, OpenAI’s entire planned revamp verges on self-parody, as if it decided to go against the trend of minimalism after seeing Google and Microsoft flattening their logos. Apart from the fact that OpenAI’s logo is already really simple. And now it wishes to use that and reduce it to nothing more than a circle? What?

This is the kind of aesthetic virtuosity produced by around a year of redesign work, according to Fortune, coinciding with when OpenAI brought on new creative hires. Sounds like they’ve been busy.

To be fair, part of the motivation behind the brand shift is that the company doesn’t actually own some of the typefaces it uses. That excuse, though, doesn’t apply to the floral logo itself, which was designed in-house. So, back to the same question: why?

Face-Off

There’s not a lot of companies that can claim to have become the face of a new paradigm in technology and culture in just a matter of years.

Consider how rapidly the terms “generative AI” and “large language model” have gone from being obscure concepts to practical things that are used by hundreds of millions of people and the subject of dinner table discussions.

And largely, OpenAI is the name that people associate with this new age of AI, with its logo being its “most recognizable brand element,” as the company once said of itself, per Fortune.

We’re sure the company has its reasons for risking some of that brand recognition, but it really sounds like it’s just shooting itself in the foot.