Couldn't find a high quality version. So I recreated it in about 3 minutes.

Pepsi recently released their new logo. It is estimated that they paid about 1 mil+ dollars to Omicom’s Arnell Group to work for 5 months on the logo. Yes, you heard me right, they spent five months and 1 million dollars making a logo that shouldn’t have even taken 5 minutes.

Of course I understand that making a logo takes a little more than just opening Photoshop and whipping something up. Especially for a large company, it needs large amounts of planning, reviews, and revisions, but this is just ridiculous. Although, my opinion may be biased due to me being probably the biggest cokehead you’ll ever have the misfortune of coming into contact with (I also hate PepsiCo, and all of it’s products- including Quaker Oatmeal, Gatorade, and FritoLay- with a burning passion).

That supposed 1 million dollars to just create the logo is just the beginning, as PepsiCo will need to replace all the old logos. Think of all the trucks, vending machines, billboards and whatnot that is still sporting that old, somewhat less boring logo. All of this replacing is supposed to run at several hundred million dollars.

Apparently, the same company is redesigning Sierra Mist, and Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew will be renamed “Mtn Dew”. I get it, they are trying to reach today’s youth by using “txt tlk”! However removing all the vowels from your product’s name can’t be a good idea.

This is why I love Coca-Cola, they’ve never changed their logo, which by the way is the most valuable brand image for the eighth year in a row.

Did I happen to mention how awesome Coca-Cola is? I highly suggest getting some Mexican Coke, it has real sugar instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been thinking of a new project - Absyrd Reviews. The site would basically consist of movie/television reviews and news.

I will design the website, and write some television reviews. My friend Absyrd, who the site is named after, will be doing the movie reviews, and some other people may join the project.

We are looking for another partner to do the website coding. However we expect this position to be filled by Nathan over at Flashindustries.

Below is a screenshot of the beginning stages of the design.

The user base of social media users is strong. There is a large population of coders, graphic designers, and programmers who visit Reddit, Slashdot, Digg, and Mixx on a regular basis.

With that knowledge, have you ever wondered why the sites are so unattractive?

I wanted to post some of the screenshots of the top social media sites, but since this is also a graphic design blog, I didn’t want to taint the beautiful with the atrocious. It isn’t hard to see that they could use a freshening up of their look and feel. The problem is that they are already so embedded and user friendly that designs are not always met with enthusiasm.

Basically, we’re used to them and they probably won’t be redressing any time soon. Still, they probably should.