WHAT TO LOOK FOR:

Initially what you may see with the hack is delayed load times (if you check your Activity window in your web browser and see that while the page is loading it’s trying to contact counter-wordpress.com or superpuperdomain.com, you have a problem).

You may also see what looks like two little grey/black boxes show up on your site, usually in a corner somewhere. These are 1px by 1px iframes that the hack is loading into sites via javascript.

WHAT TO DO:

If you have plugins installed on your site, check to see that they do not include a file called timthumb.php. This is the file that’s being targeted and, until now, was considered fairly innocuous and included in a lot of plugins and themes. That’s the door that’s getting them in. From there the attackers are able to rewrite your configuration file and thus access all of your information (site data, user data, the whole kit).

If you see something with timthumb.php in it, deactivate and delete it. If you’re not sure, access your web files via FTP or the file manager application in your hosting account and then look in any folder marked “js” for this file (most usually in your wp-includes section, the plugins folders or the theme folder somewhere).

This may break some of your plugin functions, but it’s better than having your site hacked, so take down the bad files and find an alternate plugin issued and approved by WordPress that does the same thing… or wait til they release one that does.

If you’re a client of ours then we’ve already been addressing the issue directly with those of you that are vulnerable, but if you’d like more information on how to address these attacks yourself click here, here and here.

If you have already been hacked, deleting the timthumb.php file is NOT GOING TO FIX THE PROBLEM.  Your site will need to be completely scrubbed for malware and reinstalled top to bottom.  It’s not fun and if you’re trying to do it yourself we feel your pain/headache… if you need help, just ask, we’ve got it figured out.

But there are some ads that are so classically part of their era that you couldn’t even imagine seeing them in print anymore.  Rampant misogyny?  Check.  People smoking and drinking everywhere?  Check.  Racism like whoa? Check.

Here are a handful that make us laugh and cringe (some in equal measure):

Pepto-Bismol 1944

Benson & Hedges Cigarettes – 1977

Ovaltine – unknown year

Pitney-Bowes – 1953

Dormeyer – unknown year

Thorazine – unknown year

Smirnoff – unknown year

General Electric – 1930s

Sanka Coffee – unknown year

Want to browse thousands of online vintage ads?  Click here!

Even Donald Draper in the heyday of Helvetica would not accept this new artwork.  Where Crate & Barrel pulls it off, Gap appears to be floundering in typespace, and, when lost for an anchor, dropped a gradient blue box in the top right corner as if to say “look, we actually put thought into this instead of just typing out of company name!  Really!”

What’s especially weird to us — not that the first logo was anything all that fancy, but it did have established brand recognition — is that the new logo lacks any hint of “gap” to it.  Old logo?  HAD GAPS.  New logo? HOT MESS.

Only time will tell if it sticks, but so far the world is unimpressed (it’s not just us, go Google “new Gap logo” and see how many detractors pop up).

October 11 Update:

Gap Listens to Customers and Will Keep Classic Blue Box Logo

“Since we rolled out an updated version of our logo last week on our website, we’ve seen an outpouring of comments from customers and the online community in support of the iconic blue box logo.

“Last week, we moved to address the feedback and began exploring how we could tap into all of the passion. Ultimately, we’ve learned just how much energy there is around our brand. All roads were leading us back to the blue box, so we’ve made the decision not to use the new logo on gap.com any further.

“At Gap brand, our customers have always come first. We’ve been listening to and watching all of the comments this past week. We heard them say over and over again they are passionate about our blue box logo, and they want it back. So we’ve made the decision to do just that – we will bring it back across all channels.

“In the meantime, the website will go back to our iconic blue box logo and, for Holiday, we’ll turn our blue box red for our seasonal campaign.

“We’ve learned a lot in this process. And we are clear that we did not go about this in the right way. We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community. This wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing.

“There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way.“

Drake journalism student Matt Vasilogambros wrote an article about the campaign for the Huffington Post and quoted a few students, including senior Josie Berg-Hammond:

“It just seems that there are so many other ways at promoting the school with funnier slogans that are eye-catching, without something that seems too obviously related to the grade D+, which is kind of like a joke of a grade,” Berg-Hammond said.

But on to the details: two years ago Google launched the 10^100 project to give millions to fund ideas that will change the world, and last week the winners were announced.  Shweeb — seriously, that’s what it’s called — was one of the top five pitched ideas in the category of innovation in public transport that earned itself a stackable $1 million to develop its idea.  And before we go any further, look at it.  Just LOOK:

Yup, $1 million.  Anyway.  As Google succinctly described the project (perhaps in an attempt to not explain too deeply how nutty and impractical the whole thing is) as “a concept for short to medium distance, urban personal transport, using human-powered vehicles on a monorail.”  Now imagine this in your city, and think of how often you might actually use it.  Not at all?  Yeah, us neither, and can’t help but wonder how many bicycles and bike paths could have been supported with this funding instead.

Until the Jetson tubes become real, we’re not interested.  And a little annoyed (just a little!) that this got a whole bunch of zeros worth of support while so many others miss out.  And definitely reminds us of an old client that spent $250,000 on a logo (seriously, anybody ever charges you that much for a single image, you better ask for a house to go with it).  But, you know, as Chuck Lorre says, “what doesn’t kill us makes us bitter.”

(old logo)

Tim Kaine (and his fabulous eyebrow) introduced the new logo by saying:

“So without further ado, I’d like to unveil the new symbol of today’s Democratic Party: Democrats. Delivering the change that matters. … This new identity for our party captures the spirit that unites us all. Democrats—all of us—working for the change that matters.”

Now maybe the inside panel reviewing the proposed designs were just a bear to deal with and the firm hired to imagine the new creative direction of the organization finally threw up their hands.  Or someone along the line is a super minimalist that sees everything in circular patterns and thought this struck some sort of a “power button” visual.  But in the end, the party’s managed to score itself a hum-drum logo that struggles for any real visual impact; it’s a D, inside of a circle, a colorized copyright/trademark/registered symbol.