Old JASA design
Insofar as any academic can ignore the profound, deep-rooted problems within the current model of scholarly publishing enough to have a favourite scientific journal, mine is The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, also known as JASA.
I like JASA because it's where I published my first ever paper and it's where I publish most often. My favourite thing about it was how it looked. It had a utilitarian, almost brutalist style that was as charming as it was anachronistic. The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) clearly didn't share my opinion because the ASA and its primary journal were given a rebrand by the David James Group in 2017.
Here is JASA pre- and post-redesign.
Now, obviously I'm no authority on branding or visual design — just look at this blog! — and I'm sure everyone else considers the design on the right to be a big improvement. The new design is certainly clean and modern. But now it looks like every other journal, and I think that's a shame.
If you are like me and think the original logo was particularly awesome, you'll be delighted to learn that it hasn't disappeared from the internet completely. In fact, I've created some SVGs of it (view them on GitHub).
