Less than 24 hours after my blog post, Amazon changes the Askville logo. ‘Nuf said?

(Thanks to the Askville guys. I owe you a beer!)

During my last full-time gig, I designed the Eventful logo.

So, I was amused to see that Amazon “borrowed” my design for Askville, their new question and answer service that intends to compete with Google Answers.

What’s similar?

• Arial Rounded MT Bold? Check.
• Tighter font-spacing? Check.
• Lowercase type? Check.
• Use logo on plain-white background? Check.
• Switch colors for each morpheme? Check.
• Use only two colors? Check.
• Blue on left? Check.
• Green on right? Check.

What’s different?

• The Eventful logo uses more compact letterforms (86% of normal width).
• Eventful uses a brighter blue and darker green than Askville.

Is Web 2.0 running out of logo gas?

I freely admit my design wasn’t the world’s most original logo. And a year plus later, it’s hard to remember my exact influences, but I certainly was inspired by Flickr, MySpace, SimplyHired, and Apple’s penchant for tweaked-out versions of public fonts.

Now, of course, great design is always influenced by that which came before, but the Eventful logo is fairly well known. It pops up on all Web 2.0 logo lists and was featured in Font Shop’s Web 2.0 logo roundup as an example of “the softies” (described as text-heavy logos with a human feel).

Sure, the similarity is probably is just a coindence. But I’m surprised to see a company of Amazon’s caliber making this sort of mistake.

Final thoughts

So, if anyone from Amazon is listening, I suggest creating a more compelling brand for Askville, regardless of the logo similarities. But, hey, no hard feelings… you’re still my number one.

Congrats, btw, to Jeff Bezos on today’s Blue Origin rocket launch!

…

(Oddly enough, Amazon isn’t the first. PodcastReady.com has a similar logo, though they used a slightly different typeface and added an earbud-inspired mark.)