Uproar Over the New University of California Logo

I have written several articles about the pitfalls of changing one's logo and the power of the consumers to hate it so  much that the company changes it back.    Well, not to be left out, the venerable University of California has decided to update its logo, make it sleeker, more modern, more marketable:

Of course, alumni, students, and almost everyone else have flooded the social media airwaves to express their hatred for this new look logo.  Many believe that it is not sophisticated enough to represent the University of California system. When viewed next to the "old" logo, it is easy to see the detractors' point:

Those who hate the new logo believe that it is not as prestigious or elegant as the old logo.  As with all new brands, change can be hard, especially when the change is so drastic.  University of California officials explained that the change was due, in part, because the old logo did not reproduce well for internet uses and that the logo caused confusion among the various campus' version of the UC logo. 

While the idea of modernizing a logo is not necessarily a bad idea, care must be taken to be sure to send the right message with your logo.  For a university system that boasts that it "leads the world," it probably would have been better to go with a less drastic change.  Of course, much of this may be much ado about nothing if the new logo begins to grow on people as they get used to it.  Only time will tell if the new logo will suffer the same fate as the Coca-Cola cans or the "new" Gap logo.