The journal · Gap
The Gap logo redesign: how to undo a brand identity in six days
In 2010, Gap swapped a twenty-year-old logo for something that looked like a placeholder. The internet said no. Six days later, so did Gap.
What Gap actually did
One October morning in 2010, Gap quietly replaced its famous blue box, the one it had worn for about twenty years, with a plain black wordmark and a small blue gradient square tucked over the P. No campaign. No story. Just a new logo sitting on the website like nothing happened.
The internet noticed within hours. Designers mocked it, customers made parody generators, and the whole thing became a case study in how not to run a logo redesign. Six days later, Gap brought the old logo back and called the episode a lesson in listening.
Why the redesign failed
The new mark was not evil. It was just empty. A brand identity is a container for twenty years of memory, and Gap tipped the memory out without pouring anything back in. There was no brand strategy underneath the change, no positioning shift the design was expressing, no reason a customer could repeat in one sentence.
That is the actual failure. Not the gradient square, although the gradient square did not help. A logo redesign with no strategy behind it is redecoration, and customers can smell redecoration.
What it teaches about rebranding
First: brand equity is real money. Gap reportedly spent a serious budget on the new identity, then spent the goodwill of every customer who had to watch it happen, and got nothing back for either.
Second: a rebrand needs a reason that survives a hallway conversation. If the answer to 'why did you change it?' is 'it felt dated', you do not have a reason. You have a mood.
Third: if you must retreat, retreat fast. The six-day reversal is the one thing Gap did brilliantly.
The takeaway for your brand
Change the logo when the strategy changes, and make the design carry that story. If there is no story, keep the logo and fix what is actually broken. This is exactly why we do branding strategy-first, and why every logo design we ship comes with the reasoning attached.