I keep telling myself that this is a joke, a prank, a sort of weird alternate reality where a graphic design program like Photoshop can have a logo uglier than my bum. Then I realize that this is not April Fools’ Day nor is this a joke at all.

THIS IS FOR REAL. The image above is the new Adobe Photoshop logo for the Photoshop family of applications.

I think the comments on John Nack on Adobe echo my sentiments pretty well. Just about everybody seems to hate the logo and its silly tagline “See what’s possible”. Seriously, what is going on at Adobe?

That logo looks like it belongs on a chat client. And that Aqua-ish look? Hideous. Just hideous. My first thoughts on seeing the new logo brought me back to my days of watching PBS. Sure enough, when I looked up the PBS logo, the similarities were striking. The PBS logo seems relevant and the new Photoshop logo just looks completely random.

I actually liked the subtle faded gradient icons and logos that came with CS3. Why can’t they just keep those?

I’m going to miss the logo below if/when it gets phased out.