SGAG: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

SGAG, arguably the biggest meme community in Singapore, celebrated its 5th birthday last week by unveiling its new logo. 

In true SGAG style, a clip was released showing the behind the scenes of creating the logo: 



RIP designer sanity.

For its first logo, SGAG essentially used 9GAG's wordmark and replaced the 9 with an S. I am not sure if SGAG is affiliated with 9GAG or SGAG simply borrowed the something-GAG identity and used it for themselves (please enlighten me). Either way, having a new and distinct logo would remove this confusion, and SGAG would have something more original to call its own. 

The previous SGAG logo + variations

After / Before

The new logo sneaks a smile under the "GAG", and it reminds me of the ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) emoticon we send via text on group chats. Not a bad association, considering how we use this emoticon to suggest something cheeky. However, the smile does appear quite static and forced after looking at it for some time. A suggestion would be to have a 😏instead of a 🙂 so the smile would have more personality, making it memorable. 

Also, gone is the tall Bebas Neue font and in its place we have a bolder, friendlier geometric font. The blue colour makes the SGAG face stand out more than the previous one but I am reminded of EzBuy's blue. In fact, if you go to SGAG's website, you might be reminded of EzBuy when you see the favicon.

Doesn't work in small applications!

If possible, SGAG should work on a smaller version of the logo which can be used for smaller applications. Take Amazon for example.

FYI, MGAG (yes, there is an MGAG) changed its logo on the same day as SGAG to this:



Nope, they did not steal the logo from SGAG. It turns out that since SGAG was so successful, the founders decided to spread the love northwards by getting a Malaysian team to run MGAG. Good for them!