After coming across some posts about the new logo (and now seeing it),
I'm jumping in.

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:
>> You will find attached a proposal for a new iteration of the Emacs logo.
>
> I like it, it's sharper and with better colors.
>
> But it lost something too: as opposed to the old logo (and even the
> variant with the pen), the new one feels out of balance horizontally,
> weighing more to the left. Maybe move it right a little?

This echoes my first impression.

The change in orientation and position of the E appears gratuitous to
me. Because the orientation has changed, it's impossible for the logo to
look balanced without shoving the E too far to the right.

Just pasting the old E onto the new logo, I get something that is much
less jarring.

I think just changing the background and removing the pen is enough of a
change. As another example: some time ago the "drop shadow" was removed
from the splash. Although a rather small change, I think it made the
splash look much cleaner. You don't have to change everything to update
a look.