Hot, Medium, or Mild, Medium Logo

Howard Stein
Aug 26, 2017 · 3 min read

The new logo is fine. Even with design failings, logos do work. Familiarity breeds branding, not perfect design.

The (previous) green logo had problems that were due to the drawing, the execution, not the idea, which had fantastic unrealized promise. There were limitless variations that could have kept it alive and fresh almost on a weekly basis, but no one at Medium tuned into this, even though an origami model appeared on the platform as a hint of the possible. So Medium’s green logo remained ill for the duration. The design of that logo was declared done 30% of the way there. A designers paradise to match a writer’s paradise was given a pink slip.

Instead of flowering the promise, a new-old logo has appeared. Better typography, better monogram, but that is pale praise. Very limited chance of variation and future appeal that the green logo was holding behind its back. That’s what we want, you might say. We don’t want variation, we want a stable monogram and a fashion font that may keep up with Medium the product.

No, it won’t.

It will just do its job for now, showing up for yet another unremarkable day’s work, a signal rather than archer, the sign is new, the soul is absent. The sign itself—the monogram—is already problematic in stroke thickness and scale, but that’s mechanics—another matter. One pro is you are stuck, which is not necessarily a logo negative. Look at UPS. Yes, it will burrow into the readership and writership consciousness. Which is the point of a logo if one goes back to some old Law of the Logo. But fifteen years into the future, even five years hence, should Medium be blessed with continued success, will this logo be crackling the airwaves building anticipation, aliveness, holding the speed of culture? Or will we just open it later?

Logos are not done until the emotions are nailed.

A redraw of the green logo could have repaired weaknesses and given you the stability and versatility you need, never mind what you think you want.

This logo should be airborne, aloft, floating on the currents. It should be light. Film, rather than stone.

The font now is quite nice, which is not a font compliment. That it communicates just about nothing may have been deliberate, avoidance-as-approach, intentionally non-committal, no meaningful direction — and entropy built in like everything else, just faster.

Fifties thinking is pervasive in logo design, no matter how well polished. Our world is over-logo’d soon to be available at Staples, cheap, commoditized litter starting at five dollars. What an opportunity for designers to open minds to the myriad pathways that can map a brand! The green Medium logo could have flown so many ways just from me, one graphic designer — imagine a gang of designers throwing their “M’s” into a hot little fire.

It’s interesting that a platform that has truly good design as a core attraction seems to have the bends over their logo. It’s either careless or fought over, I don’t know your process. But as I said in the first line, it’s fine, it will do, even if it does so as a mute.

No matter how well or badly your logo is designed, I will always find it on my phone as you are in the enviable position of having a strong brand first, and so the logo has less weight to carry. That’s exactly why the logo should have danced its way toward us, instead of taking a mincing step from a logo of old.

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Howard Stein

Written by

Identity Patterns and Design for Products and Interior Architecture.

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