At the end of 2008, Pepsi came out with new logo:

old logos:

new logo:

As I’m sure you can imagine (and google) this has caused quite a stir among the online community.  To summarize, some people thought the change from wave to smile was genius.  Others considered the change absolutely pointless and ugly.

• The Dieline wants to know what Pepsi was thinking.
• Kottke.Org wants Pepsi to stop trying to predict the packaging of the future.
• AIGA will keep quite about that logo, as that would be most polite considering their opinion.
• Brand New doesn’t present it’s opinion, but it’s readers have a certain. . . dislike of the logo.
• Trendsetting Design sees the logo as a clinical-medical-waiting-room-mp3-player-packaged-politically-inspired-design.
• Endure Online wants a more unified design through out all of Pepsi’s packaging/branding.
• Before&After provides an indepth analysis and concludes that the design is, while not necessarily a terrible change, certainly won’t help the brand.
• Logo Design Love wonders why they didn’t stick with a design from 1960.
• BevReview doesn’t think the change in design will change their fortunes much.
• Fritinancy likes the logo, but doesn’t like the bottles, the lowercase font change, or the grammatically incorrect advertisments.
• Laughing Lion Design wants some of the older designs brought back.
• Slashfood asks ‘what were they thinking?’
• Advertising Age presents the full scale of opinions while pointing out that, given the cost ($1million for the new logo, and hundreds of millions to replace every old logo) maybe the redesign isn’t worth it.
• A Particular Day doesn’t really want to have an opinion on a soda brand, but can’t decide if the new cans lack or have excess testosterone.

This too caused expression of opinions.  Most (everyone) thought the thing was bogus, pretentious, and just a way to make a logo sound impressive.

• Fritinancy was again disappointed by the grammatical errors.
• Brand New laughs at Arnell’s attempts to center a universe around Pepsi.
• The New York Post clarifies the general opinion.

Personally?  I think the smile is splendiferously genius.  I like the plain cans with the simple sans-serif font.  However, I agree that the off-centered words/logo/calorie count doesn’t work.  The ’si’ on the end is a little lost from the rounded ‘pep’.
What do you guys think?

2009_09_19 Update: I have turned comments off, because this is the post on which i get all my spam. If you have something to tell me, do it on a post not written eight months ago. Thanks.

Moogy: Blog

New Pepsi Logo: Terrible Mistake or Ingenious Redesign