#Cute spotify logo update
#Cute spotify logo software

Compare the lack of fanfare that followed Airbnb’s new identity with the brouhaha when Gap attempted to switch to Helvetica in 2010. “Most people have come to expect that tech company logos will change, whereas when your favorite retail store or snack food rebrands, it can be a little jarring,” Vit says.

#Cute spotify logo software

Users have grown accustomed to tech companies rebranding after only a year or two, and it’s rarely a surprise when a new logo pops up on our phone after the latest software update.

#Cute spotify logo update

Often in the case of startups, the founder or a friend of the founder designs the logo, under the assumption that if the company is successful later, they’ll update with a slick rebrand. “Young companies launch with a crappy logo because that’s what they can afford,” Vit explains. “If a company is supposed to represent the best of digital technology, but their logo looks bad on screen, that’s a problem.”Īnother reason for this brand-by-brand revamp is the fact that tech companies tend to launch and achieve wide visibility quickly, and crafting their visual identities isn’t always a top priority. “If you tried to reduce their old script logo it turned into mush. The original Airbnb logo failed this test spectacularly. For a tech company, having its logo pop even in miniature is essential, particularly when it most frequently appears just a few pixels high on a phone screen. Geometric sans-serifs scale well-they’re as crisp at small sizes as at large ones. However dull, these simple wordmarks do have one advantage over complex scripts and elegant serifs: They look better on screens. After seeing these logos in action, other brands followed suit, and a trend was born. “I don’t think Google copied Airbnb, but they just went a similar route, shedding those pesky serifs in exchange for simplicity,” Vit says.

Google’s facelift, done by an in-house team, followed soon after, losing the logo’s old serif typeface in favor of a custom-designed, geometric sans-serif called Product Sans. So, when did this trend begin? Armin Vit, graphic designer and author of the popular branding blog Brand New, pegs the emergence of the trend to Airbnb’s rebrand in 2014-by the London-based DesignStudio-which switched the logo from a bubbly script to a restrained sans serif. “They’re just trying to be like the other big boys.” “You understand why they’re making the shift from a warm and whimsical look to a more straightforward approach,” he says. Edmondson cites the pared-down Pinterest logo, which abandoned its playful ligatures for a grotesque sans-serif (“grotesque” refers to a simple, classically-proportioned typeface, similar to Helvetica). Tech companies who resist the trend may do so at the risk of appearing old fashioned. “The problem is we don’t always want to perceive corporations as legitimate if they’re not legitimate, or as friendly if they don’t actually have our best interests at heart.”Īrguably, there’s a parallel between the current geometric sans-serif takeover and Helvetica’s domination of corporate branding in the 1960s.

“These typefaces are ubiquitous, and they lend an air of legitimacy to whatever is being presented,” Edmondson says. Type nerds ended up embroiled in a spirited debate Fast Company Design turned to branding experts for their reactions.įor his part, Edmondson does not view this trend as a positive one. His tweet comparing the twinning logos went viral. It’s the typographic equivalent of walking into your Airbnb in Cologne and realizing it’s decorated identically to your Airbnb in Seoul: different site, same aesthetic.Įdmondson, who spends his days designing offbeat typefaces for his one-man foundry OH No Type Co., evidently struck a chord. Turns out that the new look for big tech is flat, bright sans-serif and essentially interchangeable. Google, Spotify, Airbnb, and Pinterest-companies that had blossomed from nimble tech startups into multi-million dollar giants-had all gradually abandoned their distinctive logos for rebrands so similar, they could have come straight off an assembly line. Recently, San Francisco-based type designer James Edmondson noticed something unsettling.