Logo change: Letterspacing 10

Sorry. As this is just a photo, clicking on that inviting blue link takes you nowhere. Well, a “pared back and sleek look” may have been delivered. I prefer to think of it as pared back and bleak, but who am I to gripe? Publishers Weekly tells us that “The 189-year-old publisher’s colophon was last changed in 2009 under then-publisher Michael Pietsch, with a design inspired by antique typewriter keys.” !?! The really old one may not have been the most elegant logo around — one has to wonder about what kind of gigantic bird it is that’s come to perch on this not inelegant column — but it at least walks past the problem of letterspacing words as problematic as LITTLE and BROWN. The 2009 logo, perhaps appropriately for a design inspired by antique typewriter keys simply ignores the idea of letterspacing altogether, just getting the caps down there in a row just as they fall. The latest version, driven no doubt by its quest for that sleek look, tries to make the two words the same length,…