I received an excited email from Autodesk last week, offering to share some news under embargo.

What was the news? A new Autodesk logo.

 

I wondered, why does this matter? What does it have to do with delivering value to customers. Here’s what Autodesk’s Chris Bradshaw has to say on the corporate blog:

“The new Autodesk is not just a surface change, but a reflection of how we are evolving our business.”

He does have a point there.  The Autodesk of a few years back was primarily a desktop applications company. With their moves in cloud and mobile, today’s Autodesk is quite a bit different. Add their new markets, such as personal fabrication and digital art, and you see a picture of a different company.

Personally, the changes I’d like to see are closer to home. The coolness of cloud and mobile don’t overshadow the fact that Autodesk is a tool supplier. Their products are used as tools by engineers and designers, to solve difficult problems.

Am I excited by the potential of Fusion 360? Absolutely. But hundreds of thousands of engineers and designers count on Autodesk Inventor. Just because Autodesk has new products, doesn’t let it off the hook to fix the problems in their old products. AutoCAD itself, at over 30 years old, still has weaknesses that should have been dealt with long ago.

I want to see more investment in bringing existing products up to the standard that users expect. That would be a new Autodesk I could get really excited about. New logo or not.