Yahoo looks to freshen its image with a new logo

Yahoo’s logo is now a little bit sleeker, under a redesign unveiled Wednesday in keeping with the company’s reinvention efforts.

The Internet company previously had a blockier-type font for its purple logo, its letters slightly out of alignment. The new look is slimmed down and more horizontally lined up, but still purple. The logo’s characteristic exclamation point also remains intact.

“We wanted a logo that stayed true to our roots (whimsical, purple, with an exclamation point) yet embraced the evolution of our products,” said Yahoo chief marketing officer Kathy Savitt, in a blog post describing the changes.

The new logo will begin appearing across Yahoo properties globally starting Wednesday night, the company said.

While the new logo is not a dramatic departure, it represents Yahoo’s latest effort to add some shine to a brand that has lost its luster. Previously one of the most powerful Internet companies in Silicon Valley, Yahoo has seen its relevance dip in recent years with the rise of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and search engines like Google.

To reinvent itself, the company over the past year has gobbled up a slew of smaller mobile players through acquisitions and re-launched numerous products internally – actions described by CEO Marissa Mayer as a “series of sprints” to catch up with its competitors.

Yahoo announced early last month that a new logo was on the way, as part of the company’s larger plans to reinvent itself. Since then the company has displayed different variations of its logo on its homepage and across its sites.

Yahoo has been busy applying other cosmetic changes to its sites over the last several months. Last week the company rolled out a series of changes to give a more consistent look to many of its mobile properties. Other redesigns for the desktop were announced prior to that.

Marissa Mayer took the helm as CEO of Yahoo in July 2012.