New Onshape Logo

mike_hölscher

Please vote-up if you fell off your chair too when you saw the new logo 
EDIT2: This used to be an improvement request with a relatively high amount of votes. But it was moved to general, so no more voting.

EDIT: Found some discussions here:
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/15088/thoughts-on-the-logo
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/14840/onshape-we-are-here-for-you

ryan_mcgoldrick

Not a fan, spoke with others using it too and the consensus was the same. 

jody_thomas

not a fan

spiritrider

I will repeat what I posted on the updates page: Love the proactive updates of OnShape! That said, as far as the LOGO...well...It seems like the new dog in the neighborhood, has to mark it's territory...thus a new logo. Not Loving it. Need to slap the dog... (this will likely send me to internet hell...)

tony_459

They could have built on the Onshape logo instead of replacing it and erasing what it represented to its users. It can be done.

I worry that PTC can't accept the different subcultures that make up their various branches. They want to homogenize. And I wonder what this means for the Onshape crew behind the scenes. They did great on their own for many years---better than PTC in many respects, if with less cash flow.

Now they have the cash flow, but they also have the leash, and judging from what seems a reckless shedding of the Onshape face, the leash is... tight? Yeah, I wonder.

What I would have liked to see: PTC showing pride in all that Onshape has accomplished, and looking for ways to enable and augment them, allowing their unique image and subculture to thrive, not just for their own sake, but for their loyal Onshape users... and ultimately for their own bottom lines.

But alas, it seems all things megacorporate must be homogeneous instead of a colorful patchwork of voices that... ultimately... like it or not.. we inevitably are? I don't understand the insistence on making all things homogeneous.

Would the Boston skyline look prettier if all buildings were in the style of PTC's new headquarters? Sometimes different is an asset ;-)

mike_hölscher

I just visited the Learning Center... Its a mess.

Just take a look at this old badge and compare it to the new one:


From simple, effective, friendly, open (this describes Onshape as we know it), to:

Sharp, closed, over-detailled, aggressive.... (is this how it will be with PTC? I sure hope not...)

Come on guys. You are really underestimating the effect of this logo/style transition. Just keep the brand identity and put -by PTC-  at the bottom of it. Like Facebook does with its big acquisitions. Its easier and keeps everybody happy.

EDIT: It seems not everybody in Onshape is using the new logo? Just got an email from Onshape with exactly this in the signature: 


This would be great! Just what I was explaining.

How do people inside Onshape feel about this? They invested their lives into creating this brand-identity, not only the logo, but also the way they support their clients. It really felt different then any other CAD/company I have ever had contact with. For me it was already a bit hard to get a 'local' support contact, instead of talking to someone actually IN the OnShape building. To have an actual Onshape software engineer in a meeting helping you solve your issue by pushing a global Onshape update. This was the moment I knew Onshape was special. The logo and complete graphical style supported this feeling. Now, it does not anymore. A new logo is fine, but this new logo and style does not fit how I know Onshape, and how I would like it to be.

tom_knapton

I'm not really adding anything new here but yes, updating the logo without updating anything else has left us with an inharmonius array of type, colour identity and language. The old logo said to me 'professional; industrial; precise; considered'. The new one says 'low-budget lifestyle app'. The new 'Certified Professional' badge looks like the result of a Youtube tutorial and 45 mins on Illustrator. 

I'd love to hear the reasoning as to why they made this change, or at least why they made just a half-arsed effort of it. In the meantime, I (and seemingly everyone else) would prefer either a total rebrand or to have the old logo put back. I can't imagine they keep the logo anyway judging from the critical reception.

david_roberts

The new logo is a fail.  Looks like they paid five bucks for it on one of those generic logo websites.  It has nothing to do with anything that Onshape is.

Guizmo

mike_hölscher said:

I just visited the Learning Center... Its a mess.

Just take a look at this old badge and compare it to the new one:


From simple, effective, friendly, open (this describes Onshape as we know it), to:

Sharp, closed, over-detailled, aggressive.... (is this how it will be with PTC? I sure hope not...)

Come on guys. You are really underestimating the effect of this logo/style transition. Just keep the brand identity and put -by PTC-  at the bottom of it. Like Facebook does with its big acquisitions. Its easier and keeps everybody happy.

EDIT: It seems not everybody in Onshape is using the new logo? Just got an email from Onshape with exactly this in the signature: 


This would be great! Just what I was explaining.

How do people inside Onshape feel about this? They invested their lives into creating this brand-identity, not only the logo, but also the way they support their clients. It really felt different then any other CAD/company I have ever had contact with. For me it was already a bit hard to get a 'local' support contact, instead of talking to someone actually IN the OnShape building. To have an actual Onshape software engineer in a meeting helping you solve your issue by pushing a global Onshape update. This was the moment I knew Onshape was special. The logo and complete graphical style supported this feeling. Now, it does not anymore. A new logo is fine, but this new logo and style does not fit how I know Onshape, and how I would like it to be.

Yes, terrible certified badge. Those stars, little lines, little circles, are you sure is not a joke? I LOVE Onshape and I kinda feel bad for saying this, but it looks like a badge you earn when playing a free game. I'm glad I got mine while in the good ol' colors. I understand the need for new corporate image and colors, but keep it simple and profesional please! We all want to be proud of the badge!, this one is childish!

mike_hölscher

Aaaand its gone... 

And its stretched.
And I did not know Professional was spelled that way.

al_qu

First thing that came to my mind, discovering the new logo: Oh no, Onshape was taken over and is going to die.

matthew_vilim

al_qu said:

First thing that came to my mind, discovering the new logo: Oh no, Onshape was taken over and is going to die.

Yeah, but at least the half-assed re-branding attempt is a clear warning to new customers to look elsewhere before they get locked in.

lougallo

mike_hölscher said:

Aaaand its gone... 

And its stretched.
And I did not know Professional was spelled that way.

Oops.. prob that way for a while.. fixed.

michael3424

Hopefully it won't turn out the way 3DS' purchase of Alibre did.  One or two years of 3DS support and product develpement followed by several years of Alibre withering on the vine.  In the end some of the Alibre folks bought the product back and resumed development.

tony_459

The only people served by this rebranding are the corporate executives hungry to see themselves mirrored in their new acquisition. The customers are just pissed.

Still hoping someone with good judgment will stop this wrecking of the Onshape brand.

If something works and has no problems, please: leave it be.

steve_shubin

tony_459 said:

The customers are just pissed.

I got a feeling that a lot of customers could care less about any logo

They’re probably far more concerned about what kind of sandwich they’re going to be having for lunch

steve_shubin

Oh, by the way

Capocollo & Genoa with Provolone sounds good to me

ChuckKey

steve_shubin said:

Oh, by the way

Capocollo & Genoa with Provolone sounds good to me

Is this intended to be a conversation stopper? The new Onshape house style mess is of more interest to me than your coronary.

steve_shubin

@ChuckKey

Has the shape and color of that logo honestly affected your ability to use the app

Do you think there are any users that would shy away from the app because of the logo.

I was involved in construction management for builders and aerospace. I had to hire engineers to do work for me. These were people doing serious work.

For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine them shying away from an app, because of the shape or color of the logo — knowing full well that using that app would give them an advantage or save them time, and headaches

tony_459

Steve, you're welcome to start a thread on sandwiches.

Your having hired people to work on serious projects neither elevates your opinions on the topic nor diminishes those of others. It just means you've hired people.

But you're right: the logo is no reason to shy away from Onshape. No one has argued that point, nor am I. Not a single comment on this or similar threads suggest we stop using Onshape because of the rebranding. And I'm glad you agree.

The point I and others are making is this: Onshape had a good brand. It worked. PTC is wrecking it. For no good reason. We are begging PTC to stop.

That is all.

And we are saying these things because we care about Onshape. And we're worried about the other ways PTC will find to make Onshape less like Onshape. Because this is how corporate acquisitions typically go. We've seen this story over and over. And the typical result is we wind up poorer on balance.

So we're waving our hands hoping PTC will notice before more damage is done. And we're hoping PTC will use its resources for better things than redrawing frankly fine corporate logos.

Because there's got to be a better way to help professionals and the people they hire do their serious work---no?

steve_shubin

tony_459 said:

... Onshape had a good brand. It worked. PTC is wrecking it.

steve_shubin

Tony I wasn’t able to add my text under your comment so here it is

Was it working ?

A little while before onshape was sold, was it working for the investors at that point ?

Personally I have no idea.

You know without investors, a lot of things like this would never of gotten off the ground. So I surely wouldn’t want to start treating investors like chopped liver

But if the investors or those that were running onshape, thought it was best that the company sell to PTC, who was I to tell them no. 

So PTC buys Onshape. PTC with revenue of 1.5 billion a year. Seems that someone at the company knows at least a little bit about running a big Corp.

And now PTC has the gall to want to give their acquisition a logo more in keeping with their other products. How dare they (joke joke)

Maybe there are some branding experts that have been participating in this discussion. Maybe they have worked IN NO SMALL WAY with billion dollar companies to design their logos and letter heads, signage, and web stuff. Well I’m here to tell you that I’m certainly not one of those design experts

I did get a little bit of laugh when reading about how bad green was supposed to be for a logo, because I googled green logos and saw a ton of major companies that used green logos, and also read what green is supposed to stand for

I could agree about the comment on the contrast of button colors because contrast is something that an older guy like myself is concerned about. But the buttons don’t necessarily have to be green. There is another color in that logo and they certainly could use that for buttons

But beyond who is the expert on branding stuff, and beyond who knows what’s best for PTC, well I’m a big believer in letting people run their company the way they want.

Let’s assume there are people participating in these discussions, who own a company(s) or have part ownership. I wonder how many of them would feel the same way about others coming in there and telling them to forget the logo you want — design it the way I tell you to or leave it as is. Now I’m sure nobody minds some advice or friendly comments about what is prefered

But please excuse me if I find it hard to buy into the statement that they’re WRECKING IT because of the new branding, as I don’t see any numbers to support that

And there’s a lot of people here in the forums that want the best for onshape. I’ve tried to do my part with my little GIFs in hopes of helping others to learn and hence, make the program more successful.

Regarding corporate acquisitions —Personally I believe PTC is very much into SAS. SAS gives that steady income that corporations are looking for. And I think onshape makes up a big component of that SAS, at least in the future.

Myself – I don’t see Onshape going anywhere. A lot of what Onhape is, is about the fact that it was built to work from the ground up, over the Internet.

Now from what I’ve read, you CANNOT take an existing off line CAD package and try to tweek it to work exclusively over the Internet, and have it turn out as successful and work in the same fluid way that onshape does. I believe AutoDesk has attempted it and they couldn’t get it to work. So onshape is a unique product of which I don’t see it going away.

If anything, I would see PTC incorporating parts of other programs such as CREO or whatever their other top of the line CAD package is into Onshape.

So I see them very possibly retaining Onshape as the CORE component or technology, and adding onto it

Now is it going to become a new program if they do that? I don’t know? but I don’t see a Onshape or the guts of Onshape going away

By the way I don’t have any kind of insider information that’s for sure. I’ve never even met anyone from Onshape. And I’ve never spoken with anyone over the phone from Onshape. So this is all my speculation

My two bits

tony_459

Steve, here's the thing.

Onshape is more than a product. It's a community, of developers and users. And behind that community are an idea and a culture that bring people to... the product.

PTC bought the product, but they didn't buy the community---not the whole of it, not even the bulk of it.

And if they want to profit from their new product, they need to foster the community that came with it---not alienate it and scare it away.

This is just good common sense, but it's also good money sense. You can't sell to people you push away.

Lucky for them, Onshape has enough substance built in it that loyal users will stick through some pains before being done with it. It genuinely would take a lot for them to lose their loyal users.

But again, we've seen this scenario many times. And those scenarios we know of are invariably of big corporations staffed with people who in your words know "at least a little bit about running a big Corp."

Big companies fail all the time. Most companies that ever were are now gone. And odds are most companies that took off when PTC took off are now gone too.

Big revenues don't mean you don't fail. And PTC is as vulnerable to failing as any big business ever was. But if their success depends on bringing people to their products, then it pays to foster the communities that come with their acquisitions---and that means respecting the brands they buy and building on them, not thrashing them.

If they instead treat those brands as clothes and hairstyles to change as they please, not realizing that they're disfiguring the identities they bought, then yeah, they're going to piss off the communities they depend on for revenue.

We don't want Onshape to become a cautionary tale in the CAD world. It's a great tool made by a great team and it's concerning to see that being messed with all for the sake of this misguided idea that all sibling brands of a corporation should look the same. They should not.

steve_shubin

PTC has been around for a long time in the CAD world. they have shown staying power. They’re not some fly-by-night organization.

And as with a company like autodesk, they realize that acquisitions are important to maintaining some kind of an edge.

Numerous other companies that are not diversifying — that are concentrating more on a limited product line or maybe one product only, well a number of these companies are slowly becoming more irrelevant or fading away

Bigger companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Alibaba realize that trying to stay in one place and maintain equilibrium, will not work for them. It’s either grow, or little by little start to fall behind and become less and less relevant

With the above in mind, PTC has been about growing, diversifying, moving into different products for years

As such, I’m not worried about the survival of PTC

As far as community goes. as I said earlier, I try and contribute in the way I can. I’ve posted a fair amount of GIFs  — hopefully some will be helped at least a little by them

tony_459

Yes, but you miss the big point: they're defacing the brand they bought and alienating the original community behind that brand. Alienated means less receptive to them means more work by them to sell to us. Even if money is your sole measure of success, then alienating your customers is not the path forward.

steve_shubin

tony_459 said:

... Alienated means less receptive to them means more work by them to sell to us.

To sell to us ?!!!

You already said you’re not gonna turn away from the program because of that logo. SO THEY DON’T HAVE TO SELL ANYTHING TO YOU. YOU’RE A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE ALREADY. And like me, a non-paying one at that, so ...

The point I made earlier was, you never gave me any numbers on how they WRECKED the company or app or whatever

You have no idea how their sales are going. I’m guessing they probably have a long-term plan regardless of whatever the rate of growth is at this current time — for what that’s worth

But until you can show me how people are turning away from the app because of the logo — with some good hard numbers — and not fall back on the argument that a handful of people say they’re not crazy about the logo, well until then, maybe it would be expedient to use some other word than WRECKING

I haven’t heard of one person turning away from the program because of the new logo. And I doubt any serious people doing any kind of serious work would turn away from the program because of a logo

There are a ton of products that I buy that have logos that aren’t very attractive. Sure doesn’t stop me from buying and using whatever it is that those logos are stamped on. And I bet the same goes for EVERYBODY else here

Everybody’s going to go ahead and talk about what they would prefer or why they believe something else would be better. No big thing about that. Very understandable. And I absolutely am not here trying to insert myself as an arbiter on what can and can’t be said about the logo

MY ONLY HOPE IS THAT YOU WOULD AT LEAST CONSIDER TEMPERING YOUR LANGUAGE A TINY BIT BECAUSE I REALLY DON’T BELIEVE USING A WORD LIKE WRECKING, IS HELPFUL, WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO BACK UP WHAT YOU SAY

As to your COMMUNITY stuff. The community is working. People are helping one another. They’re writing FeatureScript for others to use. I’m sure they’re trying to tell others about the program when they get the chance. There’s a lot of interaction within the community. The community is working. But no doubt — you’re going to try and convince me that this logo is absolutely and unequivocably destroying the community and maybe messing with their psyche and who knows what else. Save your breath. I DON’T BUY IT ONE BIT. The forum is going to go on. Everything else is going to go on THE SAME WAY IT HAS BEFORE

History has shown that it’s a stable company. Myself, I believe onshape is here for the long run because it is SaaS based. My opinion

But I’m not gonna convince you

And you’re not gonna convince me

No amount of discussion on this one is going to change either of our minds

so I’m out of here on this one

Have a good one !

john_mcclary

tony_459

Ow, the all-caps, I give, I give.

The rebranding? A good idea. I have no concerns and I hear no concerns. I think all are pleased with the changes. We frankly hope for more.

Apologies for the impolite and incorrect use of "wreck" instead of "shake up" or "improve." I pick the wrong words a lot. I meant "improve"---or, in your style, "IMPROVE."

I won't miss the old Onshape, I have to say. Blue circles? Bold white fonts? Good riddance. I like my logos sharp and green. All logos should be sharp and green.

It's been good talking brand improvement strategies.

radek_michalik_pro

Bring the OnShape LOGO back! What a rebranding disaster. I hope they are not wrecking a whole organization like that! What a shame. It was expected that OnShape would not stay independent for long but this looks like the beginning of the end ... very sad.

GWS50

Gosh, what a lot chat about the new Logo....shall we just try and help make Onshape (the first SaaS CAD option BTW) as good as it can be, I like OnShape because it makes my job easier....with it's fantastic collaboration methods and it's unparalleled support (the longest I've had to wait for help is 2 hours and that's mainly the the time zone I'm in).
Green. blue, hexagons, circles...not sure that it's that important to my job!

tony_459

GWS50. We agree. Which is why we're troubled by PTC's focus on "green, blue, hexagons, circles." We're not sure a new logo is important to your job either. There are more important things in the CAD world than changing a perfectly fine brand.

The rebranding suggests skewed priorities at PTC, with emphasis on image when substance matters most. It suggests also a willingness to meddle with Onshape, which is troubling, because Onshape had its game down in spades when they were bought. To meddle with good things is to risk breaking those good things.

PTC has done it before, with Mathcad, and I hear the results weren't good.