I was one of the UX designers for eBay in 1997-98, just before the IPO. I was working on what would become the Gallery view.
When Meg Whitman took over, I presented the work we had done so far. I was pretty wet behind the ears at the time, and I was enamored with the latest shiny objects on the Web. eBay, by way of contrast, had a look that could be charitably described as "homespun." I was busy polishing things up, tightening the color palette, improving typography (as much as one could in 1998), reducing clutter, and using what I thought of as killer JavaScript flourishes to really blow people away with the Gallery View. I may have even tried to introduce some Flash at the time, I'm not sure.
What I do remember was the way Meg schooled me when I came in to present my slick new state-of-the-art Gallery. I don't remember her exact words, but she told me that I was building something that simply wasn't eBay. She explained to me that the success of eBay came from the sellers who thought of eBay not as a company, but as their own corner of the Web that belonged to them. The audience for eBay, she explained, was mom and pop types, people who were comfortable with garage sales and flea markets, and who had built a level of trust with eBay based on what they saw as a brand that shared their down-home values.
eBay's biggest competitor at the time was Yahoo! Auctions, and eBay was killing them, because people thought of Yahoo! as a faceless, monolithic corporation, and couldn't feel a sense of ownership about placing their auctions there. I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of being appropriate to your audience, and not always going for the latest, slickest design.
I've always liked the fact that their logo kept that original homespun feel. The site has slowly evolved over the years, and their audience surely has as well. It's arguable whether eBay still has the folksy appeal it had in the 1990s. The new logo represents a very authentic reflection of the change to the brand, and the company itself. The nostalgic side of me would love to see the old logo and the old brand stick around forever, but if I'm being honest, this is probably the most appropriate thing they could have done. It's a genuine expression of the brand's history and personality. You can't say much better for a logo than that.
Thank you for this story. I always wondered why ebay looks the way it does. And I always assumed it was because of greed (the reasoning being something like: "If we can charge for bold text, we will not matter how it looks"). This puts ebay's design, or the lack of design, in a much better light.
This is a wonderful example of interface as brand. Logos are such a small piece of online brands, and it's cool to hear that folks at eBay grasped this so early. Thanks a ton for sharing!
When Meg Whitman took over, I presented the work we had done so far. I was pretty wet behind the ears at the time, and I was enamored with the latest shiny objects on the Web. eBay, by way of contrast, had a look that could be charitably described as "homespun." I was busy polishing things up, tightening the color palette, improving typography (as much as one could in 1998), reducing clutter, and using what I thought of as killer JavaScript flourishes to really blow people away with the Gallery View. I may have even tried to introduce some Flash at the time, I'm not sure.
What I do remember was the way Meg schooled me when I came in to present my slick new state-of-the-art Gallery. I don't remember her exact words, but she told me that I was building something that simply wasn't eBay. She explained to me that the success of eBay came from the sellers who thought of eBay not as a company, but as their own corner of the Web that belonged to them. The audience for eBay, she explained, was mom and pop types, people who were comfortable with garage sales and flea markets, and who had built a level of trust with eBay based on what they saw as a brand that shared their down-home values. eBay's biggest competitor at the time was Yahoo! Auctions, and eBay was killing them, because people thought of Yahoo! as a faceless, monolithic corporation, and couldn't feel a sense of ownership about placing their auctions there. I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of being appropriate to your audience, and not always going for the latest, slickest design.
I've always liked the fact that their logo kept that original homespun feel. The site has slowly evolved over the years, and their audience surely has as well. It's arguable whether eBay still has the folksy appeal it had in the 1990s. The new logo represents a very authentic reflection of the change to the brand, and the company itself. The nostalgic side of me would love to see the old logo and the old brand stick around forever, but if I'm being honest, this is probably the most appropriate thing they could have done. It's a genuine expression of the brand's history and personality. You can't say much better for a logo than that.