The Huffington Post launched a re-design today, complete with a shortening of their name (but only just slightly) and a new logo.

Most people just call it HuffPo, but that’s absolutely not what they went with. Emphasis theirs, probably. Instead, the site is now HuffPost. Do they have a long-winded explanation for their decision? Oh, do they ever:

The official name change, Editor-in-Chief Lydia Polgreen said in an interview Thursday, reflects “what our readers call us anyway.”

“Sometimes it’s a good idea just to embrace the name that your audience has chosen,” Polgreen continued. “It’s shorter, it’s snappier and gets us a more compact look.”

(That is not what people call it, people say (and write) HuffPo. Changing it to Hufflepuff would have been just as close to what people actually use, while also gaining some cred with Harry Potter hipsters.)

Some could see it as a move to reduce the site’s ties to founder Arianna Huffington, no longer involved with the site. Fear not, those of you who might think that, for HuffPost has a ready reply:

Still, Polgreen said the rebranding isn’t intended as a break with the site’s namesake. 

“Everything that HuffPost is today stands on the shoulders of what Arianna Huffington built,” she said. “So I think that it’s in no way meant to diminish or distance us from that legacy because we’re incredibly proud of it. But I think it’s just trying to catch up with the times and how people now think of us.”

Again people think of The Huffington Post as either The Huffington Post or HuffPo, not what they chose, which is an attempt to split the difference in a new way.

The logo has also come under fire. Here’s Sean O’Neal of the AV Club:

“The mark itself forms a road, a slash, an abstract H―everyone sees something different, and we embrace all the possibilities,” they say.

Whatever you might see—a crooked line, a road veering dangerously off-center, a diagonal line, the Jolly Green Giant’s ass crack, a slanted line, billable hours for your creative-strategy firm, “Hey, why’s this line all weird?”—you will certainly never mistake this line on a green square for anyone else’s publishing business vying for visibility and respect in a crowded marketplace.

That green divide splits open to allow for the site name to fit inside, a la a URL, or something like that. In my opinion, though, that green thing, when combined with the leaning font, looks (and feels) like a Dollar Tree storefront. People always hate change, and maybe this will be a more effective design for the site, and maybe it helps to shorten the name for various purposes. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still call it HuffPo, which is what everyone calls it anyway.

About Jay Rigdon

Jay is a columnist at Awful Announcing. He is not a strong swimmer. He is probably talking to a dog in a silly voice at this very moment.