Nickelodeon is the children’s television network that has long been linked to slime. While the programming on Nickelodeon has moved further from slime gags in recent years, the brand and the substance will be forever linked. However, the connection is no more as far as the Nickelodeon logo is concerned.
The iconic splat symbol that identified Nickelodeon as the fun network for kids has been replaced with a boring wordmark.
I don’t have a problem with Nickelodeon updating its logo, per se. Clearly, the brand is being repositioned as what I have to assume is a bit more grown up than the splat icon communicated. With Hannah Montana and The Jonas Brothers rocking the Disney Channel, it’s not surprising that Nickelodeon wants to up the ante and get on a more level playing field with its competitor.
According to Nickelodeon, the new logo design was simply a move to bring the various sub-brands under the same symbol for consistency. I’m not buying it. Such an extreme change signals more than just looking for consistency. What do you think?
Regardless of the real reason why Nickelodeon changed its logo, I can’t get past that font. Why is there a lone capital K? Why does the kerning look so odd? Or is that just an optical illusion because of the lame font? And where have I seen that font before? I can’t place it but that hideous ‘n’ rings a bell.
All I know is I wouldn’t want to have to reproduce that logo at an extremely small size. There is no doubt the white space in the ‘e’ would disappear.
Your thoughts?
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
I agree with miss Susan. Nickelodeon is turning their backs on what made them special,out of the box ,different,fun,and endearing. I order to win the real fans back you have to go back to the old school way of doing it with game show,witty cartoons,classic cartoons,and line ups. no more marathon of spongebob,no more three hours of I Carly,no more sexullaly driven show with in return aways upset the parents.I beliveve that in order to beat disney you have to play your own game.Trust me a lot of people i know hate the disney network with appeal mostly to girls.Try to beat disney by apealing to both boy and girls.this was done in the old nick with show like,clarrissa explains it all,kennan and kel,pete and pete,and shelby woo.
thank you miss Susan.
I think the ‘n’ comes from a font used by the channel called The N. Just a hunch.