Brand New Uber

This is my first Medium post. Please be gentle.

I’ve read a lot lately about the new Uber branding, including the very insightful article by Jessi Hempel for Wired, and the design system breakdown on Brand New, and I had a few thoughts.

This isn’t really going to be about the design, so first…uh, three quick design notes.

Like many of you out there, I agree that the app icon isn’t so great. It’s a small piece of a gigantic system, but its the most visible piece, and it looks a little like a map from the movie National Treasure to me. With Uber though, what really matters is under the hood. As long as my car comes quickly, I can pay easily, my data is secure, I don’t get gouged, etc. I’ll use it. Moving on…
And for the record, I personally liked the old icon. Just the right combination of black car chic, scary typography, and kind of a Boba Fett icon look. But change was and is inevitable. Again, moving on…
Uber did take pains to publicly name and define its graphics system, down to its DNA (bits and atoms) which may have been a little much. Admittedly, this is a pet peeve of mine. Design documentation is having a bit of a renaissance, the new gold standard of which is no doubt Material Design, and the old champion still in there punching is this popular reissue of the NASA graphic standards manual. As beautiful as these packages are, they endure because of the design behind them. Not sure Uber is there yet.

Which brings me to the process of how the brand design came about. The culture that created it. First, lets be honest. Many companies do very well with bad design. Google succeeded for years with essentially no design, because its products worked well. I’m still very happy with blue link text search results in my browser because search results are about, well, results! And Google’s results are pretty great. I also don’t care that Netflix’s interfaces across most screens are essentially rows of marketing assets with helvetica headers, because those results are personally relevant, which is the glue that makes it sticky. That and the Peaky Blinders

And in the case of Uber, you can argue that Uber will be just fine with bad icon designs. In fact I just did argue that. Up above. But, shouldn’t a company that could potentially have the biggest IPO of 2016 be a little more buttoned up when it launches an all encompassing redesign of its core product and systems? According to Jessi Hempel’s story, Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick really likes to play in the design sandbox. He was integral to the process, involved at every step along the way. That’s honestly fine for a while. Design is tempting. It looks easy to many people, just like photography or karaoke. But the bigger you get, the more global and uniciorny you start to look, the more the CEO should focus on CEO’ing and let the professionals do their jobs and trust them. Marissa Mayer spent time working on Yahoo’s brand as well. Not sure that was the best use of her time.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Take a minute to listen to Stan Freeberg’s classic “Everybody Wants to be an Art Director” here. Really. It’s funny. Sort of.

Eventually, though, when companies need to compete, globalize, increase scale, improve retention, delight users, and maybe most importantly, gain the trust of investors, they need to show the ability to use design effectively.

Poor design can often be the first symptom of a bigger problem. Like that ring you get after a tic bites you. Bad things could be lurking beneath. Things like disorganization, inefficiency, miscommunication, poor prioritization. Design is the part of your company that consumers see first, the visual representation to the rest of the world of how well your ship is run, how competent you are, how detail oriented you are, how you see yourself. When you have billions of dollars and global users watching, you want to make sure you look like you know what you’re doing.

So as much as Travis Kalanick may want to roll up his sleeves with his team late at night, he would probably better serve his company, and ultimately gain the confidence of his investors, by doing what a good CEO does. Communicating and leading. Hiring well, empowering teams he trusts, holding them responsible, and measuring their success or failure based on results. And let the designers design.

That’s what I think. I’d love to hear your thoughts, good, bad or otherwise. Thanks!

Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks