Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization

http://blog.rjmetrics.com/2013/10/09/our-logo-looks-like-underpants-a-case-study-in-internationalization/

by jthandy • 13 years ago

245 110 13 years ago

blog.rjmetrics.com

phpnode• 13 years ago

the white logo in the header bar still looks like Y fronts![0]

0. in the UK.

adestefan• 13 years ago

I didn't even know what Y fronts are and it looks like underwear. Even the new one that's not suppose to still looks like underwear.

simias• 13 years ago

Maybe the article just put it in your head. You can't "unsee" it, so to speak.

pgeorgi• 13 years ago

If you happen to do the Rorschach test and only see pants, please don't blame the test conductor.

Pxtl• 13 years ago

Yeah, that. I assume their rebranding is incomplete.

harvestmoon• 13 years ago

The logo keeps on making me giggle. It looks like underwear to me. I don't know if I'd have seen it without reading this article, but now that it's in my head, it's hard to get out.

jug6ernaut2• 13 years ago

Why does it say UK saw underpants was "26%" when the chart right above says "2.6%"?

alan_cx6• 13 years ago

I see 26, not 26%. 26 is 2.6% of 1000.

(Just woken up and I am a bit blurry, so, I might be tragically wrong)

jug6ernaut2• 13 years ago

Yes I believe you are correct.

alan_cx6• 13 years ago

I would not have said pants to start with, but now its been said, all I can see is pants. [0]

Maybe this is more about the power of suggestion

0. UK, where pants is pants and not trousers. ;)

Edit: Also, pants is a UK way of saying rubbish. So, "that web site is a load of pants", might be said. Might be a sense of humor at work here.

goatforce5• 13 years ago

I spilled some coffee on some light coloured trousers on the way to the London office. The stain was centered right in my lap and I couldn't really go around like that all day, so I stopped and bought some cheap trousers at Gap to sort me out.

Pro-tip: Telling your local UK colleagues that you were running late because you stained your pants and needed to get new pants, and then offering to show people the stained pants is going to lead to some awkward moments.

alan_cx6• 13 years ago

Ah, wonderfully divided by a common language!!!! :)

"Fanny" is a great cause of transatlantic fun too. And if you are a Brit in the US, never ever say, "Im diving out for a fag". You're gonna get some odd looks.

chimeracoder• 13 years ago

. UK, where pants is pants and not trousers. ;)

I made this mistake once when I spent a summer in Ireland in high school. (I should add here that the people at this summer program were noticeably more homophobic than I was used to back home[0]) I had borrowed a pair of "trousers" from a friend for a costume for some event.

When asking permission from the RA later that night to go to a different dorm after lights-out, I told him, 'I need to give <friend> his pants back'.

I will never forget the look of horror that he gave me.

[0] Not sure if it's a cultural thing or just the program I happened to be at, but either way, it's relevant.

JonnieCache3• 13 years ago

Confusingly, in the north of england and in scotland, pants means trousers, just like in the US.

squidi• 13 years ago

It's spelled internationaliSation (joke!)

kawsper• 13 years ago

We like to spell it "Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiøn"

olalonde• 13 years ago

I think the proper spelling is "i18n" actually.

JonnieCache3• 13 years ago

I don't see any underwear, but the thing definitely looks better with thinner lines. It brings out the 3d shading more. Presumably that's why more people recognise the geometry after the change.

victoriap• 13 years ago

I had the same issue, couldn't see the underwear at all. And finally after seeing the people in pictures, I can see. Internalization requires a lot of effort.

blackdogie3• 13 years ago

Post mentions Google Comsumer Surveys http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/pricing

at $0.10 for targeted and $0.50 for targeted (age , gender, etc) responses this seems like a great way for getting feedback quick. Has anyone got any experience doing them ? Does anyone know how these people answer surveys, is there a web portal for people to sign up to do them ?

prezjordan• 13 years ago

Looks like Google embeds this survey directly into content on many sites, probably through AdSense tags?

I'm not sure, I don't think I've ever seen one.

blackdogie3• 13 years ago

Just did some more research, they have outlined a bit here http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/how sometimes it unlocks content (and the publisher gets a slip of the fee).

It seems that they somehow have you already targeted to a 10% accuracy level based on your search history.

Their case studies are also worth checking http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/use_cases

JunkDNA• 13 years ago

I've seen them smack dab in the middle of boston.com "The Big Picture". You basically can't look at more than a few of the photos without answering a google survey question. For me, looking at this page now asks me who my auto insurance provider is with: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2013/10/broken_lives_of_fuk...

carlob• 13 years ago

It must be blocked by AdBlock, because I've never seen one.

I'm realizing now I'm missing a pretty large part of the web, by using AdBlock and Ghostery: most social share buttons, ads, Disqus comments… I should probably go on the unadulterated web one day a month, just to see what it looks like.

ydant• 13 years ago

I've never seen these before. I disabled blocking and was, on my first load, presented with this:

http://i.imgur.com/aYE5GC7.png

xux• 13 years ago

http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/how

Why is that "take the tour" button so messed up?

sadow• 13 years ago

Hey Xux,

What issue were you having with the "take the tour" button?

cninja• 13 years ago

I can't say what is is about your comment or the article, but something about the combination gives off the vibe that this is an astroturfing effort to promote Google Comsumer Surveys.

blackdogie3• 13 years ago

I've been a member here for over 4 years, I doubt I'd wait so long to promote a product.

ckelly2• 13 years ago

I'm a co-founder of Survata (YC S12) which also runs consumer surveys. We're lower cost than Google Consumer Surveys and give professional survey design advice for free. Email us at contact at survata and we'll hook you up with a Hacker News discount. :)

andyhmltn2• 13 years ago

I have to admit I'm from the UK and I saw exactly that. Why?!

potatolicious• 13 years ago

I'm from Canada and saw the same... but I'm going to go with being primed by the title >_>

alan_cx6• 13 years ago

Could be basque the title suggested it?

Note: I miss typed "because", and the spelling suggestion was "basque". Given I like an amusing typo, and the given subject, I simply had to leave it as is....

andyhmltn2• 13 years ago

Possibly, but I went into the article thinking it was going to be about a poorly designed logo from a freelancer or one of those amusing situations where their company name means something weird in another language.

I didn't for a second think 'looks like underpants' was literal haha

robbfitzsimmons• 13 years ago

I still don't really see the pants, but have in the past been guilty of designing, and using for two months in production, a logo that a focus group decided was "swastika-esque."

So maybe don't listen to me.

rpedela• 13 years ago

What is wrong with people thinking the logo looks like underwear? I am willing to bet people are more likely to remember the logo and company. I remember when everyone was making fun of the name "Wii", but I would be surprised if that name, which generated free publicity, did not help Nintendo.

If the logo reminded people of genocide, okay change it. But underwear? Seems like a good thing to me since they might remember it better.

pionar• 13 years ago

As they stated, they didn't want Twitter search results for their brand to be littered with underwear jokes.

TeMPOraL2• 13 years ago

Probably upper management without sense of humour.

jakestein2• 13 years ago

I can verify this [1]. The management team does not have a sense of humor.

[1] I am cofounder and COO

owenjones• 13 years ago

It's definitely this, they barely laugh at my Jurassic Park / Jeff Goldblum jokes anymore.

ScottWhigham• 13 years ago

Valid question - "any press is good press" and all that. I think it makes sense to change it if 25% of users think that way but 2.6%? "Oh, how cute. Those Brits..." would've been just as valid of a response.

alan_cx6• 13 years ago

From a UK perspective, the problem is that "pants" can be used to say something is rubbish, or similar. We might say "that new Yahoo Mail design is a load of pants". With the Wii example, there is not the same sort of common use in any country I know of. (Maybe there is, but I don't know)

So, OK, it is amusing and probably memorable, but as I Brit I would have tell them that they don't want a bunch of Brits saying their product is a load of pants.

So, anything else, and it might be slightly clever marketing, but in this specific, I'd put my sensible head on and say they should avoid it.

kordless• 13 years ago

According to his survey, 26 Brits said it. Hardly worth thinking about really.

leephillips• 13 years ago

The site chooses to use the type of social media buttons that tracks users, puts them in a fixed position, and, on my browser, the buttons obscure part of the text. I don't stick around long enough on sites like this to read any articles.

molf• 13 years ago

The first logo is not a dodecahedron; the geometry is wrong. In reality it would be impossible to see all the three faces drawn at the edge of the logo from the same perspective.

Perhaps people subtly pick up on this geometric imprecision and more easily associate it with something else?

moocowduckquack4• 13 years ago

If it was a small dodecahedron, like about the size of a dice, you would see those three faces unless you closed an eye.

Domenic_S2• 13 years ago

Trivia: 'die' is the singular form of the plural 'dice'.

bernardom• 13 years ago

People who thought the logo was underwear before they put it on the front page of HN: 2.6% of Britons who read their website.

People who thought the logo was underwear now: (How many people read a frontpage HN article?)

agumonkey• 13 years ago

Small images are often confusing, see http://www.reddit.com/r/misleadingthumbnails/

jonahx• 13 years ago

I see how this would happen with users in London, and I even see france, and come to think of it I can see rjmetrics's underpants!

porterhaney• 13 years ago

Good tidbit in the conclusion: "Hackathons are an amazing resource for kick-starting new ideas and proving out concepts. However, they should never be used to circumvent due diligence on big business decisions."

nraynaud• 13 years ago

It reminds me of this french car named "Pajero", Spain is a neighbor...

praptak• 13 years ago

"“Dodecahedron” took second place [...] followed by a laundry list of other geometric shapes."

Heh, heh, heh, he said "laundry list".

Jagat• 13 years ago

Exactly. When he said "laundry list", I thought he meant a flurry of words that meant Y-fronts.

kyro• 13 years ago

I would invest in refining that logo even further. I couldn't tell it was a decahedron until you mentioned it. I actually see more underwear in it than I do geometry. The small slivers and color shades also hinder its recognizability and limit its scalability and consistency across multiple mediums.

jnardiello• 13 years ago

Even without the article, first thing i saw: Y-front. PS: I'm from Italy. Maybe it's a Europe thing.

derekp7• 13 years ago

It's funny how things like this only look like another object once someone mentions it. For example, when my step kids were little, they used to constantly ask about the "underwear" signs posted all over the place. Couldn't figure out what they were talking about, until I had them point it out sitting at a red light.

The traffic lights have stop signs that are folded down, and get unfolded when there are problems with the signals. So the bottom half of a white octagon does look like a pair of briefs.

polskibus• 13 years ago

Wouldn't an association with pants be better than a mere geometric shape? If it stays in ones memory for longer, then why the hell not? It's all about being recognized by the customer!

adam12• 13 years ago

That reminds of that commercial for the Universal Technical Institute. It's funny hearing that guy tell me all the great things about "UTI". I probably wouldn't remember the commercial if they had some other boring acronym.

tekmate• 13 years ago

why would they settle on a skewed 3d view of the dodecahedron as a replacement. it doesn't look like a logo at all now

steven20122• 13 years ago

Does it really matter what 2-3% of a random sampling of people think in a single country? Could this possibly be too sensitive to trying to please too many people?

madaxe2• 13 years ago

3% of the UK population = ~3m potential customers or detractors, so yes.

dave5104• 13 years ago

Even so... only about 3% decided to answer with underwear. I imagine it may have crossed an even larger percentage of user's minds, but they didn't want to answer with that.

steven20122• 13 years ago

3% of the UK population does not translate into 3M potential customers for their particular product, which appears to be some sort of Big Data service. It might translate into 1 or 2 customers out of those UK businesses that might actually need their services.

bjterry• 13 years ago

It's odd that no one has mentioned this, but part of the reason no American thought they looked like "Y-fronts" is because American briefs don't have a Y-front. I have never seen underwear that looks like the first and third example on the rjmetrics site. If you do a comparative images search for "briefs" and "y-front" I think it'll be pretty obvious.

stan_rogers• 13 years ago

Jockey (and only Jockey, as far as I know) used to have a Y-front, which is one of the reasons they never sold well in Canada. I still completely ignore the brand even though they changed to a more typical fly a couple of decades ago.

kamjam3• 13 years ago

The term “y-fronts” never caught on the US because American underwear maker Jockey convinced the buying public to use the term “Jockeys” instead.

I'm pretty sure I have seen "y-fronts" in US shops and in the movies. The post specifically mentions that people call them jockey briefs in the US.

kojoru• 13 years ago

Similar thing has happened to Yandex.Browser in Russia: http://browser.yandex.com/

A couple of vocal geeks suggested its icon looks like underpants on a sphere and now everybody thinks about that when seeing the icon.

bitwize2• 13 years ago

Psh, that's not even as big a logo botch as the Brits committed to themselves: the UK Office of Government Commerce unveiled -- to much tittering and whispering -- a new "OGC" logo back in 2008 which, when rotated ninety degrees clockwise, looked like a stick figure standing and, er, "'aving a wank" in the local slang.

OGC quickly reverted to its old logo, correcting the er, boner, but nevertheless in some circles (particularly Reddit), "OGC" remained for some months a sort of shorthand indicating sexual arousal.

dasil003• 13 years ago

What about the London 2012 Olympics logo? That can't be undone, and it can't be unseen once you see it (ie. the Fedex logo effect not in a good way).

laumars3• 13 years ago

I remember when the BBC News aired a goatse interpretation of the London Olympics logo without realising the references being made.

kamjam3• 13 years ago

The London 2012 logo was a pile pants :)

Fortunately, once the games kicked off people forgot about the logo and it was a very successful event by all accounts and there was a huge buzz in the air with everyone (I'm a Londoner). Still can't believe they paid that much money for that!

dylandrop• 13 years ago

You don't have to be from the UK to see that that logo looks like whitey tighteys. (I'm from the US, and while the title of the article definitely solidified how I saw the logo, it still looks like men's underwear to me.)

I would suggest adding/removing more sides to the dodecahedron rather than rotating it... ("hendecahedron"? "nonahedron"?)

mcenedella• 13 years ago

Best enterprise marketing blog post of the year - funny, fact-filled, self-deprecating, clever.

bickfordb• 13 years ago

I don't understand the brandmark's meaning. It may as well be a swoosh

smcavinney1• 13 years ago

I don't know if your reference was intentional or not, but check out our old logo:

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=rjmetrics%20swoosh&...

laumars3• 13 years ago

The reason most of those images of underwear didn't look like their logo is because most of those pants (as us Brits refer to them as) were not proper Y-fronts.

If you look at this image - bar the colour / pattern of the underwear, it's actually geometrically similar (which the briefs they exampled were not)

http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemitlum/archive/00418/SNF14WOM01C...

meshko• 13 years ago

I think you are missing the point. The problem is that it is just not a good logo. It doesn't mean anything, it doesn't say anything about your company. If you can't come up with a good logo just make your company name the logo. Random geometric figure is not a logo.

ckelly2• 13 years ago

YC-backed Survata (another consumer survey service) released a logo testing tool last month: http://survata.com/logo-surveys

Startups considering new logo options should check it out!

Disclosure: I'm a Survata co-founder

buro9• 13 years ago

Microsoft Office 2007 came with a new feature, instead of going to the new ribbon at the top you could now highlight a chunk of text and a floating mini-toolbar would appear in which you could access the most-used commands: bold, underline, etc.

I remember the program manager demonstrating this to the closed group and announcing proudly that Office now had a `floater`.

At which point all of the Brits and South Africans either sniggered or plain exploded with laughter.

It took a while for things to settle before it emerged that the Americans in the room didn't see what was so funny, and the Brits and South Africans interpretation of a `floater` was a turd floating in a swimming pool.

The name was changed by the next time we saw the feature, if I recall correctly they went for the far less ambiguous "mini toolbar".

fosap• 13 years ago

Why does a language have a word for such a thing? Is it common? I haven't even thought about the possibility of the existence of such a thing till now.

recursive• 13 years ago

I'm solidly American, but I know that definition of "floater" also. I don't know where I learned it. It just kind of seemed like common knowledge.

MRSallee• 13 years ago

Anyone that grew up going to public swimming pools, with other kids, knows the term. Not necessarily from first-hand experience, but at least from legend.

Roboprog• 13 years ago

Thank you so much. Best laugh I had so far this week. And brave of you to point it out.

brianmcconnell• 13 years ago

I work on translation technology, and have seen some pretty bad examples of companies choosing names that have bad connotations elsewhere.

One of my favorites is Evite, which means "avoid!" in Spanish, not exactly a good name for a party invite service.

The all time winner for badly named tech products was the Commodore Pet Computer, which was launched with great fanfare in France (and elsewhere). The only problem is pet means "fart" in French.

stefap2• 13 years ago

A similar case was a logo mentioned in previous HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6509473

Once you see it ...

Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization

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