YouTube 2 days logo: Video site preps for 'Life in a Day' project
Today YouTube changed its logo to a brown globe – not exactly the most delightful of graphic designs – and updated its normal tagline to the cryptic "YouTube 2 days." What gives? No, it's not a countdown to Armageddon. Instead, YouTube is teasing its upcoming one-day "Life in a Day" experiment, which begins and ends on July 24. (Video trailer below.)
Here's the gist: Together with a couple of old Hollywood hands, YouTube is asking users to send in footage of themselves... being themselves. "The most compelling footage," YouTube reps write, "will be edited into an experimental documentary film produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin MacDonald." The full film will be shown at the Sundance festival next January.
Count us a little dubious. Although we're sure you have a very exciting life, we are not sure that we need to watch you making a sandwich or crossing the street to pick up your laundry. Still, we'll give the director and the producer the benefit of the doubt: MacDonald directed "The Last King of Scotland" and Scott did "Robin Hood" and "Gladiator," so maybe they can wring some excitement out of the quotidian.
In April, of course, YouTube rolled out a real redesign, which affected everything from the rating system to the recommended videos column. It took just a few hours for users to rip the new YouTube to shreds. "Preferred the old design by some margin," one user wrote in the comments section of the company blog. "This new one is clean but dull and awkward to use."
