• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, September 5, 2013

Yahoo on Wednesday unveiled its new logo after featuring different variations on its Web site over the last 30 days to boost publicity. The update retains the upper case lettering, exclamation point and color purple as design elements but sports a cleaner, less whimsical look.

The first redesign of the company logo in 18 years is meant to reflect the broader changes underway since Marissa Mayer took over as Yahoo CEO more than a year ago to revitalize the stagnant Web giant. 

It’s clear Mayer, who curated the Google Doodle program while at Google, was hands-on in developing the new logo, which went live at midnight.  In a blog post today titled “Geeking Out on the Logo,” the Yahoo chief explained that during one week this summer “I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team.”

She noted that effort also included input from Yahoo employees, 87% of whom wanted some type of change in the logo, including the tilted exclamation point that wound up as part of the redesign. Judging by posts to #newyahoologo on Twitter, early reaction to the new logo makeover appeared to be decidely mixed.

According to uber-blogger Jason Kottke, "The new Yahoo logo looks like something Steve Jobs would have designed before he learned to delegate that sort of thing."

In the end, it’s not likely to have much, if any, impact on the turnaround project at Yahoo. And with the company showing no signs of revenue growth so far under Mayer, critics will be quite to note she has to do more than spruce up its image to improve things.