A client once asked us to redesign their logo in "every major font" so they could pick the one that "felt right."
We did it. Forty-three variations. Same mark, different typefaces. Helvetica. Futura. Baskerville. Garamond. Bodoni. On and on.
They picked Comic Sans.
I'm joking. But only barely. They picked something equally wrong for equally inexplicable reasons. Because when you're choosing from forty-three options without criteria, you're not making a design decision. You're playing aesthetic roulette.
This is what happens when we let subjective preference masquerade as design thinking. "I like it" becomes the whole argument. And "I like it" is impossible to debate, impossible to improve, impossible to defend.
Good design isn't about liking. It's about working. Does it communicate what we need to communicate? Does it work at every size? Does it work in one color? Does it work when someone sees it for three seconds on a phone screen?
These are answerable questions. "Do you like it?" is not.
Massimo Vignelli designed the American Airlines logo in 1967. It's still in use. Not because everyone liked it then, but because it worked then and it works now. Two letters. One color. Infinitely scalable. Functional before fashionable.
The London Underground roundel has barely changed since 1908. A circle, a bar, a typeface. Edward Johnston designed the typeface specifically for legibility at speed—when you're rushing through a station. That's not decoration. That's problem-solving. The logo works because it was designed to work, not to win awards.
Compare that to brands that redesign every five years. The redesigns aren't better. They're just different. Different satisfies the urge to do something. Better requires actual problems to solve.
If your logo needs to look "cool," it'll look dated in three years. If your logo needs to work, it'll work for thirty.