DC Comics reveals new logo and branding for their comic and entertainment line.

There were rumours that the initial designed leaked was the start of a new rebranding for DC as a company - and they were right.



It's only been 7 years since DC moved away from the "bullet" logo designed by Milton Glaser back in 1977, and rolled out the 'comet'/'swoosh' logo that most are now familiar with:



But it seems there's two points DC Entertainment is wanting to make from here with the new design: that along with the New 52, they're making a point of a new start and a complete rebranding; and that it seems that the larger 'Entertainment' side of their company is taking precedence in relation to this new logo design.

As a graphic designer, I've been following the news of this new logo design since I first heard of it, and I honestly can't say I'm too impressed by the logo. Don't get me wrong, it's servicable, but my problem is that there's very little about it visually which reflects anything about the company; not it's roots, area of profession or anything else. It's all basically summed up by "entertainment" in the parent logo, shown in that oh-so-innocuous and incredibly general Gotham typefont, today's catch-all Helvetica: the motive was to design something more flexible and all encompassing for the wider company, but in the midst of it all they kind of forgot about continuing to define an identity while they were at it, a key concept when it comes to designing a logo.

Even worse, the visual representation of something peeling away isn't new or original in the logo world:



Take away the typefont on DC's new logo and it could be for any service. Paper mill company. Accounting firm.
At least with their 2005 logo, it still encapsulated what the company was. It's aged a little but if you look through all of the logos that DC has ever had, there's a clear line of progression that makes sense. The comet/swoosh at least denotes what they're all about. What we have with these new designs though are just a completely clean break from anything that's come before hand.
DC have gone on to say that a big point of this brand new logo was to make sure it could involve an element of motion and interactivity, but all the same I could easily see how they could bring the same element of fluidity/animation/movement to the logo they had.

Luckily, in amongst some different colour treatments just released are some images of stylised flourishes to the base logo, which has quelled a bit of the dissention against this new ID, but

1) The base design is still very bland, and while it may distract some, no amount of Photoshop EyeCandy abuse is going to change that.
2) They're obviously not going to do a specialised DC logo for every book out there. Some books at the top of the food-chain may be privy, or they may have a handful to denote what kind of book you're reading (like they did recently with the variant logos of the swoosh/comet logo, which was a great idea) but the standard logo on most of their product will still be that basic peeling logo.

In summary, what they've come up with is completely sterile and inoffensive. It'll do, and it looks okay applied to actual books, but it still says nothing about the brand, nothing about its heritiage and definitely does not go above and beyond.

The full DC press release:

Also some added images of the logo used in different ways:

http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/169277-dc-entertainment-reveals-new-brand-identity

Wait a second. . .It's not April 1st?

It looks like shit. It looks like something Google or Adobe would use for a new desktop icon for a shitty application.

I'm totally not making a SO version of this logo.

They transfer okay onto the books - I like how they're flush on the spine. Still, logo is devoid of character:

It's already an incredibly badly defined "D" in the first place.

Actually they look like 50% better on the covers, but still I think the current logo is pretty ace and is in no need of a redesign.

Wonder if the upcoming Dark Knight/Superman movies will have the new logo?

Honestly, DC should just use the Trinity logo as thier company logo. That's the IPs where they make all their money.

I've decided we're rebranding SO now:



The O pulls back to reveal an S. Give me my million dollars Sketch.

I was gonna do an S pulling back revealing an O, but the concept design was getting convoluted.

Just saw a commercial for the new Green Lantern animated series. Cartoon Network is branding it part of the "DC Nation" and they used the new foldback logo.

Wonder if Gotham City Imposters will have the new logo?
EDIT: Nope. GCI uses the previous logo.