Meta recently rolled out minor updates to its Facebook logo refreshing the familiar brand subtly in ways that make most of us shrug.
But brand recognition is a valuable asset and Facebook is one of the most recognizable brands in the world.
So changes, even small ones, create a stir in design circles.
Facebook’s brand has gone through many changes over the years.
The most notable was when the company changed its name from Facebook, Inc. to Meta creating a new brand for the many products the company offers.
But the flagship product, the social media platform Facebook, kept its branding look with the familiar proprietary font and blue color.
The new change requires a side-by-side comparison to the old because the tweaks are so minor.
So why make a change at all?
Dave Nguyen, Director of Design offered, “We wanted to ensure that the refreshed logo felt familiar, yet dynamic, polished, and elegant in execution. These subtle, but significant changes allowed us to achieve optical balance with a sense of forward movement.”
In other words, the gradient blue used in the previous iteration didn’t play well in different contexts.
Meta’s traditional approach to brand updates can’t help but be compared to Elon Musk’s inexplicable tossing out of another globally recognizable brand at Twitter.
The effect of the change is still being dealt with by users, media, and journalists alike who are forced to clarify mentions of the new brand by saying “X.com, formerly known as Twitter.”
Musk has drawn plenty of criticism for his recent brand change to ‘X’ with many claiming he has an obsession with the letter.
These brand changes are another example of the Zuckerberg-Musk business cage match.
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