Eddie Bauer logo ditches the script because Gen Z doesn't read cursive

It’s a major rebrand that launches on Eddie Bauer’s digital platforms today and will start to appear at international brick-and-mortars on a rolling basis. By fall 2024, all Eddie Bauer products will begin to feature the updated logo.

[...]

Though Bantle and his team initially toyed with the idea of keeping the script font, the general reaction they received was that it looked dated and, to some, confusing. “A big part of what I’m going to need to do here is reintroduce this great heritage brand to the next generation,” Bantle says. “And kids don’t even learn to read cursive in school anymore.”

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[–] oregoncom@hexbear.net 36 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Calligraphy has been a big part of almost every culture with writing for millennia and will continue to be for millennia to come. It exists because it looks cool, trying to justify it with writing speed or whatever is just some bazinga brained bullshit and thinking it needs to be eliminated because "muh computers" is even more bazinga brained bullshit.

Althought listening to millennials talk about the experience of learning cursive I can sympathize a little. Somehow Anglos can't even teach their kids cursive without beating them or otherwise traumatizing them.

[–] Huldra@hexbear.net 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you're looking at it through the modern conception of public schools you do basically have to justify it with some quantifiable metric like writing speed, or you discard it cause muh computers.

Whole thing at the core is a problem with schools existing to prepare kids for the labor market, as well as having to quantifiably grade everything to determine a childs future opportunities in academic bullshit.

And students know that they're under pressure to determine their futures too, so they're gonna be sitting there with cursive feeling like this is all bullshit that just randomly will fuck them over if they can't get the hang of it.

[–] Huldra@hexbear.net 10 points 2 months ago

Really so much shit that public schools try to do, at least in my experience, is stuff that doesn't work well in large class settings.

Like art or music is stuff that really requires a tutoring experience to make real progress in and not just be some mickey mouse hour of fucking around and having mild fun just not doing something academic. I remember spending a whole half year term literally only learning the intro part of "Wish You Were Here", with the teacher going back to the start every lesson cause he had to adapt to the hypothetical slowest learning student, and you didn't learn shit except how to mimic that one set of movements, we didn't even have actual picks, but the teacher didn't teach us how to do fingerstyle either, you just had to do the bullshit fake pick by pinching your thumb and index finger.

Cursive arguably would fall under that too, at least if you wanna view it as an art form or hobby, like give a kid a tutor explaining and talking about it directly to them and they'd probably find a way to have fun, or they say outright it seems boring and could get to choose something else.

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[–] BrezhnevsEyebrows@hexbear.net 27 points 2 months ago (2 children)

i-think-that I like cursive and think it should continue to be taught in schools

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 16 points 2 months ago

To me cursive was a very important part of gaining fine motor skills. All these horror stories about being abused to learn cursive don't sound like the problem is with cursive, rather with abusive teachers

[–] worlds_okayest_mech_pilot@hexbear.net 13 points 2 months ago

I'm with you there. Obviously we shouldn't, like, beat children for not writing perfect cursive in third grade, but kids should be playing outside and engaging in more active learning anyway. There's no harm in making one of the actual classtime activities be cursive rather than extra math class.

[–] polskilumalo@lemmygrad.ml 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Wtf, this literally the font taught in Polish schools for handwriting. I write like this.

[–] huf@hexbear.net 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

yeah, everyone writes like this here too. i was shocked to see americans print each letter individually like they were illiterate...

[–] polskilumalo@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 2 months ago (3 children)

It really do be an anglo only issue it seems

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[–] MF_COOM@hexbear.net 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I mean, yeah it's time we moved on from cursive for sure makes sense it was invented when we used fountain pens

[–] EnsignRedshirt@hexbear.net 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It’s amazing that they were still teaching cursive when I was in school in the 90s. They had elementary school kids who had never seen a fountain pen in their lives learning two different kinds of writing for no reason whatsoever. As a kid you’re just like “I guess we doing cursive now” but it had to be embarrassing to be a teacher, who has also never used a fountain pen, trying to explain why anyone would ever need or even want to write in cursive.

[–] SoyViking@hexbear.net 12 points 2 months ago

They were teaching us a dumbed-down version of cursive in the early 1990's. It looked like shit so I taught myself cursive because I'm a big nerd.

It looks better but nobody but me can read my handwriting. It doesn't matter though since like most people I literally never write anything by hand any more.

Today schools here are barely teaching handwriting at all and students are mostly free to draw letters in whatever way they want. My eight-grader's handwriting is more illegible than mine were in the second grade.

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 19 points 2 months ago

As a former educator, regarding the decline of cursive and the once-mandatory teaching of cursive:

[–] AndJusticeForAll@hexbear.net 17 points 2 months ago

[–] Huldra@hexbear.net 17 points 2 months ago

A signature isn't a real logo, it just looks like uninspired shit.

[–] newmou@hexbear.net 17 points 2 months ago

This is so funny. Like one of the early milestones along the way that we’ll get to look back on and laugh one day when we reach the point of just general American illiteracy

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Do Gen Z even give a shit about Eddie Bower? It's more of an "old man who lives alone in a cabin with no phone and an outhouse" brand. I don't remember the last time I even saw a Gen Xer wearing Eddie Bower.

What I think is they're starting to realize Millennials are becoming grandparents and need a new avocado toast demographic to blame the economy on.

[–] FungiDebord@hexbear.net 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

GenZ dresses like shit so it's no surprise.

[–] polskilumalo@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

F-fuck you too!! M-meanie :kitty-cri:

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[–] goose@hexbear.net 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

No! No!

The goose icon is good, use that as a secondary icon. But god, if you need to make the logo more legible, just change (or ditch) the approach stroke on the first E.

[–] FuckyWucky@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Straight Fs in cursive gang gigachad

[–] Findom_DeLuise@hexbear.net 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Three cheers for undiagnosed dyspraxia! And for parents who would say shit like, "if you get straight As on your report card, we'll buy you a new Nintendo game! Oh, what's that? An A in every subject except Handwriting, and you only got a C+ in it? Guess you're a miserable fucking failure who doesn't get a new game! Enjoy playing nothing but SMB/Duck Hunt until the end of the next quarter!"

[–] AndJusticeForAll@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I would have gotten you a video game for those As. But I wouldn't have known what were the good games so I probably would have gotten you the Who Framed Roger Rabbit game or Metal Mech. And you'd be like

joker-amerikkklap "it's SO good" through a strained expression that I never pick up on.

[–] Findom_DeLuise@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That would have been an improvement. When we did finally get a second NES game, the family discussion went something like this:

Me: "The Legend of Zelda is supposed to be really, really good."
Mother's live-in manchild boyfriend: "I LIKE RACE CARS!"
Mom: "It should be TWO PLAYER. Is LEGEND ZELDAR TWO PLAYER?"

A couple of weeks go by, and my mom comes home with a game. She says it's two player (it's not), it has RACE CARS, and she can't remember the name but it starts with an "R." I'd been doing my research up to this point, and thought maybe it was Rad Racer, which was supposed to be all right if you're into that sort of thing.

Nope. RC Pro-Am. Manchild boyfriend played it twice, got frustrated at the fifth or sixth level, complained that the yellow car cheats, and never touched it again. Mom tried it once, couldn't figure out the controls, and declared that she didn't like Nintendo games. I beat my head against it for a few weeks during summer vacation and never made it past something like the 15th or 16th track because of how badly the difficulty ramps up after that. (And yes, the yellow car does cheat; it had glitched physics that allowed it to lap you multiple times on some tracks.) It was one of those games that Rare published while they were on their "punish the untermenschen swine for not having perfect twitch reflexes" shit, not unlike the vehicle stages in Battletoads.

Suffice it to say that I have hangups.

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[–] Tofu_Lewis@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Everything will be Arial Bold and you will LIKE IT

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[–] KnilAdlez@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

ngl I'm starting to come around on cursive, at least for signatures. It's fun to come up with your own little art piece to put on contracts and shit.

[–] Skeleton_Erisma@hexbear.net 9 points 2 months ago

Sorry sweaty I think Eddie Bauer I think of shitty ford expeditions with bad head gaskets

[–] Hydra_Fk@reddthat.com 9 points 2 months ago

The old logo was trash and looked like a fifth grader writing a report. In my opinion that is. New logo looks like that kid finally got a computer.

[–] rootsbreadandmakka@hexbear.net 8 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I don’t use cursive at all, but something about this is just very sad. Kids can’t read cursive anymore? Idk, that doesn’t really bode well

[–] LeylaLove@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago

Yeah, I'm 23 and have a hard time reading cursive. I was taught it in elementary school, but there was no pressure to continue using it after learning it so I just forgot it over time.

I literally still use my dead name for signatures because I don't know how to write Leyla in cursive and Ls were always the hardest letter for me if I remember right

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[–] PortugueseDragon@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I had no idea Anglos didn't write in cursive. It's the way everyone I know writes here in Portugal, even if some letters are changed (I write straight capital "F"s instead of cursive capital "F"s for example). Is it taught in schools but just never used?

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[–] PointAndClique@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago

First they came for the Eddie Bauer cos I don't wear that shit
Then they came for the Stüssy

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