"I graduated college with a degree in design and I redesigned some popular logos I think we can all agree are ugly," says Emily Zugay on her TikTok account. She proceeds to redesign iconic logos into Microsoft-Paint-style abominations. Zugay is clearly doing this as a joke, and her three videos have gotten nearly 12 million views— each. Perhaps more notably, major brands like Adobe, The Washington Post, and TikTok itself have piggybacked off the attention, actually using Zugay's designs as social media stunts.
Here's Zugay's new Starbucks logo which she claims has a "more of a happier feel." Starbucks has not used the new logo in official communications, but a number of other brands have. Watching this TikTok joke unfold has been one of the highlights of my week. Here are some official brand responses to Zugay's work.
Zugay also redesigned the Detroit Lions' logo, creating a photo of horizontal lines captioned "detriot lines." The NFL team adopted her image for their profile picture and used it on T-shirts (which didn't impress current players).
After Zugay redesigned the Adobe logo, the official Adobe TikTok account printed their "new logo" on pieces of paper and put it around their office.
The Washington Post's response video:
Here's Nascar's response video, where they adopt Zugay's new logo which "makes it look like the words are flying through the air at a very fast speed."
Ocean Spray's response:
Perhaps the most notable response comes from TikTok itself, which replaced its profile picture with Zugay's clock-inspired image.