Not good branding

well i was going to put a funny branding picture in here, but wordpress changed their interactions, and the uploader thingy isn’t working. way to go.

which is interesting, because I see a lot of that lately. Changing of a well branded thing.

Most people are resistant to change, especially when the change moves away from something that works well. It is only when the change is for the better( or at least perceived that way) that people start saying, “oooh they are so smart for changing that!”

But they only say this after they’re done complaining about things changing in the first place.

So, how do you know when its tiime to change some thing that is well-established as working well? The old Adage goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But what if the quality is subjective?

Time to look at a few examples. The new Microsoft Office. WTF? I loved the drop down menus. I knew where everything was. Now, they messed with all of the commands and menus for all of my familiar programs: Word, Excel, Powerpoint… I am frustrated by the need to do the simplest of commands!

At first I was agitated. Why change something that works well for everyone? Why mess with a format people have had years, in some cases over a decade to get used to?

Then I considered: maybe thats the point. Maybe Iv’e grown used to a bad thing. Kinda like the Start Menu on Windows. I never used to bat an eye going to the Start Menu.

But that must be confusing as hell for new users. Go to the “start” menue to turn a machine off? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. So.

What’s it going to be? New and Different, of Old and Safe?

that’s a question for life as well as for branding. What would you do?

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