People Are Freaking Out Over New Logo

By now, you should know the logo affects the web design directly as it contributes to the corporate colors and the choice of fonts used. It also has a direct impact on the customers.

In the past few weeks, 2 big companies made “subtly big” changes to their logos. We are sure its such a subtle, yet big change, that you are likely to have missed it but once you realize it, it can never be unseen.

First of all is Spotify, the Swedish music streaming app company. They have changed their corporate green color to a darker shade of green.

“Some of you might have noticed a slightly new green in the Spotify app since the last update. We’re excited to finally see this rolling out as part of our bigger brand refresh we introduced earlier this year,” explained Tobias van Schneider, the Design Lead at Spotify in a blog post on design site Dribble.

However reaction to this change in color is more negative than positive. Many twitter users have been complaining how this new green “hurt their eyes” and is even “disgusting”, and many are thinking it was unnecessary for a change in color.

The other company is Facebook.

Facebook’s new logo is designed in collaboration by Facebook’s in-house design team and Eric Olson of Process Type Foundry. The original logo was designed in 2005 by Joe Kral and Cuban Council using Process Type Foundry’s Klavika font as a starting point. Its unique tight letter spacing, hard corners, and very subtle variations in thicks and thins, has made it easily stand out from other typefaces.

The original logo started out to be more “grown up and to be taken seriously” because it was when facebook just started, the team behind facebook wanted it to be more professional. However now that facebook is so established, the new logo is to make them look more friendly and approachable.

Perhaps the biggest change is the letter “a”, where the new one is rounder, since it is customized entirely to fit into facebook’s new direction. But the change is so “small” that most people are not concerned by it.

As designers, we must have came across many logos that are made up of solely customized typefaces, perhaps a customized version of Helvatica, logos of companies such as Samsung, IBM, Microsoft, are all variations of fonts. We must have also came across clients with specific corporate colors, such as red and white for Coca-cola.

When it comes to redesigning of logo, we have to consider many aspects of the redesign. Such as what does the font/color represent? How will the customers of the company feel about the change? What platform will the new logo be used on? There will not be one absolute answer for the “right” change of logo, however, there will always be the “better” version. Keep testing your redesign before launching so that you can avoid unnecessary backlashes.

For choosing a font for your website, please take a look at our earlier post on typography.