At least I used to be able to recognize it, until they made the decision to ‘blandify’ it by flattening the whole design and slapping a little clipart looking plane in place of the cool one we have all come to love. Now, I know that there is always resistance whenever a brand changes up it’s look, and usually it is just people not wanting to lose something they have formed a (somewhat) emotional attachment to, but I really think that, looking at the rebranding objectively, that it is a HORRIBLE move on Expedia’s part.

Paul Leonard, VP of brand marketing at Expedia, attempted to explain the reason for the change:

“We were striving for a more timeless and classic aesthetic,” he said. “It’s a little less whimsical and more sophisticated.”
— Seattle Times Article

The complete lack of anything interesting in the new logo is not the only problem with it.  It is a really, really close imitation of Hotwire’s (an Expedia owned company) existing logo. So much for originality.

To see the changes yourself first go to http://www.google.com

..and then copy and paste the following into the browser bar and hit return:
javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

The new design, as seen below, makes some updates to the style of the logo and makes considerable use of the color blue.

There have also been some changes to  the results page:

We’ll see if this actually goes anywhere…