The ditched Cracker Barrel rebrand will certainly be remembered as 2025’s most controversial logo design, however the US monetary information community CNBC is making a late bid for the title. It’s revealed that the traditional peacock design that is additionally used within the NBC logo might be dropped in favour of a extra minismalist wordmark.
The new logo was impressed by the model’s historical past, whereas an arrow motif is supposed to level up and ahead, lots of people are struggling to know the design choices (see our decide of the best logos for designs that work).
The fate of the CNBC peacock logo is the tale of a death foretold. The channel can no longer use the iconic bird because its current owner NBCUniversal, is spinning this and a bunch of other assets off into a new company called Versant, which will be owned by Comcast shareholders (you’re keeping up, right?).
The manoeuvre already claimed one branding and graphic design victim earlier in the year when MSNBC was rebranded as MS NOW, supposedly standing for My Source News Opinion World.
In CNBC’s case, it will get to maintain its title, however may have a new logo from 15 December. Okay.C. Sullivan, the President of CNBC, has described the design as “a symbol of the direction where we’re headed and the exciting new chapter we’re headed into.”
The fused N and B within the centre are supposed as a reference to the unique CNBC logo from 1989, when it was launched as a three way partnership between NBC – a part of General Electric on the time – and Cablevision (you might be maintaining, proper?).
The blue upward arrow between the fused letters is supposed to mirror the ‘sq. movement idea ‘ of the community’s on-air design language, which makes use of the arrow as a repeating image and to type the field holding the CNBC logo. The arrow’s additionally supposed to mirror the model’s experience in monetary information, representing inventory costs climbing.
That’s the thought. But viewers and designers produce other interpretations. “Looks like a sinking ship with a blue sail, and the little cleft between the N and B provides extra emphasis of the ship sinking,” one particular person writes on Reddit.
Others assume the notch on the underside between the N and the B and the way in which the triangle pops out makes the visible language really feel “finicky and disjointed”.
One designer has a extra chopping evaluation seeing it because the type of logo that seems when shopper’s workforce cannot agree on something and good concept has been shot down.
”Eventually you hit that time the place the trail of least resistance turns into the one path left. After months of deliberation fatigue, everybody convinces themselves they adore it: “OMG, the team and I decided last night that we love it, it’s ‘just perfect,’” and that the blue triangle “actually simply pulls the entire thing collectively, you’ve gotten such an EYE, it actually pops!!”
“The result is a logo like this: a boxed-in, oddly proportioned, personality-free form where Pathfinder meets Boolean subtraction, and a supposedly clever N-stem gets repurposed into the spine of a B, complete with an X-Acto-knife wedge for emphasis. I’m sure everyone involved was simply relieved to call it done.”
Inevitably, some are suggesting that the logo is another victim of the trend to minimalism in logo design. Others complain that it has all the personality of a bank or that it looks like an in-flight news programme for Delta Airlines.
“The old logo broadcasted color and perspective. This one broadcasts hierarchy. When a news brand trades a living symbol for a geometric control glyph, it tells you everything about where the narrative is headed,” one person reckons writing on X.
Some suggest that logo appears to read ‘CABC’ rather than ‘CNBC’. Others are already comparing it to some of the most controversial logo designs of recent years, including rebrands what were dropped. “Reminds me of the GAP logo redesign disaster, but they had the good sense to revoke it within a few hours,” one person writes on X. “Cracker Barrel vibes,” one other particular person says. Ouch!