For the past 30 days, we’ve witnessed an identity transformation for the still-popular Yahoo! brand. While I personally feel that the new Yahoo logo is a bit of disappointment (and for the purposes of this blog post, I’ll omit why), I think the execution of the identity change was brilliant.

In recent years, graphic designers and consumers alike have witnessed some tremendous re-identity failures. Remember the Tropicana logo change? How about the Gap logo redesign? These redesign failures were so publicly scrutinized and criticized with such poor ratings that they must have terrified many well-known brands from updating their own logos in such a grand scheme.

In stark contrast, Yahoo’s 30-day new identity launch program, which published one new idealized logo each day, not only gained public attention but also eased in the idea of change. This campaign effectively notified consumers ahead of time that change would indeed happen and allowed everyone to get comfortable with it just in time for the big reveal.

Most of all, the addition of one new logo a day published to Yahoo’s platforms was a creative and fun way to engage consumers in the process, shedding a little light on just how many different directions an identity can go. Publicizing the process cued the public (or non-designers) into how much just one stroke can make a big difference on a first impression.

I hope this subtle education goes a long way and that we continue to see similar campaigns, because the more non-designers understand the complexities of graphic design, the better off the creative industry will be.

When she isn’t scheduling social media and writing blog posts for AIGA Baltimore, you can find Kate Lawless designing communications, digital signs, documentation, and interactive software elearning for a large healthcare organization in Baltimore.

You can reach Kate on Twitter @katereez, and find the original blog post and more design and daily musings on her blog, DESIGN/Vines.