The WWE, for all its flaws, is generally a company I think of as having a good visual sense when it comes to their product. They aren’t selling iMacs. They’re selling wrestling, and typically their sense of design works in conjunction with that to produce media that is designed to sell their product, which means: make it exciting, make it thrilling, make it epic. This is not a brand that necessarily needs cool, iconic, classy design to sell their product. (One of the things about the “minimalist” trend of design that is so popular on the interwoobs now is that so much of it is so pointless – why do you need a minimalist poster of Wolverine? He is fucking Wolverine. He is a midget with claws who kills people, usually ninjas. Why do you not want a poster of him killing ninjas with his claws instead? But I digress.)
Anyway, my point is this: the new WWE “signature” that starts off their shows now as of the thousandth episode of Raw is just god-awful. (It is all the more awful when you consider that, at about the same time, they replaced the horrible, cheesy Nickelback-sung opening for RAW that they have had for a few years with something much better.)
It is boring. Some non-confrontational minor key piano that could be the intro jingle for any late-night infomercial, a bunch of still photos, a lens flare. Worse than boring, it is incredibly non-specific – I mean, after John Cena and Andre the Giant the photos rapidly become less and less easy to distinguish, because they are being obscured by the WWE logo which is also hard to distinguish, so I’m not sure what the point of that was. Please recall that this is trying to sell an organization whose raison d’etre is “let’s put two guys in a ring and have them try to beat each other unconscious.” (Yes, yes, it’s fake, but that’s not the point. Wolverine is fake too, you know.) How does this signature sell that? It does not sell that. Not at all. Rather than being the visceral image the WWE needs to push its product, it is instead sterile.
But worst of all, it replaced the awesome signature the WWE has been using for the better part of a decade:
That conveys the same sense of history that the new signature seeks to provide (and more comprehensively), but it’s exciting, possibly because it’s not just a stupid series of still images set to elevator music but instead shows actual fighting and wrestlers saying cool things and doing cool things and is set to a simple expanding crescendo that is nonetheless intense. It is a good signature – one of the best they’ve ever done if not the best. Replacing it is not necessarily stupid so long as something better comes along, but the new thing – it is not that thing!
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Man I love your site and your writing. Man I hate it when you do WWE posts.
It is times like this I am glad that, due to working late on Wednesdays, I don’t get many chances to write timely So You Think You Can Dance blogposts any more. The whining about those were epic.
If I was forced to make an uninformed guess (and there is someone in my house, with a gun to my head, forcing me to make this guess), I’d say that it’s an attempt appeal to people who watched WWE/WWF in their teens about 10-15 years ago, who now have kids between 7-14. It’s the fathers who buy the tickets and the pay-per-view viewings, so they want them to think nostalgically about their own history with WWE and encourage that in their kids.
The opening piano chords are terrible, but not for the reason you gave.
Listen closely – it’s actually an elevator muzak version of Baba O’ Riley (incorrectly aka Teenage Wasteland) by The Who. So, non-confrontational? Not really for the song in and of itself, but holy itchin’ syphilic cancre is that a terrible version of it.
For the record, I liked the So You Think You Can Dance posts.
I also enjoyed the So You Think You Can Dance stuff, if only because of how bizarre it was for you to be talking about SYTYCD in such an earnest and in-depth way.
I don’t mind your wrasslin’ posts either even though I’m not a wrestling fan, you talk about them in a fairly interesting way that keeps me engaged.
But if you’re absolutely determined to make it up to me, I could sure go for some more Doctor Strange or Who’s Who posts, though you seem to ration those out produce in Soviet Russia. Or maybe a retrospective on the one year anniversary of the DC reboot. Or an extended essay about why Superman’s Kryptonian overpants are vital to the character and must be restored.
Vince doesn’t want wrestling fans to watch WWE. He wants to be an “entertainment” company. Ugh.
Too bad the Summer of Punk II failed. At least Bryan is over now…
At this point, I seriously question why WWE should put any effort into this sort of thing. I check out Raw every week, but only after it airs, so I can fast forward through it. Does anyone actually sit theough the entire show? Even people who watch it live are probably taking a break to do other things while it plays in the background. It’s still a decent show, but I just don’t have time for all the filler, including the boilerplate opening graphic. I had some inkling they changed it up after 1000, but I never paid much attention to the old intro either.
That their graphic is uninspired suggests to me that maybe they realize no one’s watching that part. If they were smart, they’d just do a cold intro to the ring once in a while to keep people on their toes.
It’s weird. I have no interest in SYTYCD. So when you post about it… I scroll past and ignore it. Never knew the right choice was to post comments whining about them.
I can’t watch the old clip anymore without the Botchamania audio superimposing itself over it in my mind – “I’ve been in the danger zone… Minus five stars! Finish! …Huh? Mongo!”
MGK – I don’t watch SYTYCD, nor do I have any interest in wrestling, but I love hearing your perspectives on both. Keep it up! Geekery is a good thing in all its forms.
I think they need to change their logo entirely. The WWE started using that logo in the late 90s when it was WWF. They dropped the “F” part when they were sued by World Wildlife Foundation but never changed anything else about it. They should have a logo that actually says “WWE” and not just a W or something.
Oh yeah, commenters- blogs reflect the interest of the people writing them. You don’t have to read everything someone writes if it doesn’t interest you. I feel like it’s rude to whine about it when you don’t have to support the blogger and get the content for free.
The new theme song reminds me of the 80’s era Y&R theme.
Don’t judge me.
I agree with Ken- the logo is honestly a little outdated, and it doesn’t quite fit the rest of their design. They tweaked the wrong thing, basically.