Glow
I’mmmmmmm tired of the new Instagram logo haters! Tired of ‘em! All they’ve got to say is that it’s bad, over and over. Boring. Snoozefest. What if we take a closer look? What if we look at just the gradient?
First, the colours. There’s two active components: the bit of blue up top, the yellow down in the bottom left. To back those up, there’s the purple rising up from center left to upper right and the dark pink to fill out the middle and bottom right.
The blue gives that top edge a strong definition. It’s like a border to the icon, giving you a line to catch when skimming.
The yellow patch is a nice flare of brightness, a highlight. It also visually balances out the white dot in the camera shape.
The purple and pink are deep, softer colours here. They let the icon be not too bright overall, while contrasting the yellow and blue to heighten their effects.
Next, positioning. The blue and the yellow regions are both to the left of the center. I like that a lot. This icon is unusual, perhaps unique, in the App Store: it is a irregular, ungridded, unmathematical gradient. It’s organic. It has life and activity.
There’s an idea in character posing: simple vs complex. One side of the character gives the overall action, the other gives points of interest. The left side is complex: a gradient that covers 5/6th of the rainbow, opposing curves between the blue linear gradient and the yellow radial one. The right side is simple: purple to pink, with space to breath.
Finally, reminiscences. That gradient looks like a furnace sunset, a plum cheesecake, a mountainbike bruise. The white camera is Instagram, and the gradient stands for every photo poured into it. Same metaphor with the new design inside the app: bright photos, humble interface.
A lot of the haters are still stuck in the iOS 6 mode of thinking, where the app’s UI & icon should stand out, with tacky highlights and fake chrome. Now, I’m not going to say every choice in iOS 7’s design was right, and I love me some wacky UI. But I think that the crystal goblet concept is right for apps like Instagram. Give as much deference as possible to what the user wants to see.
This is an example of how designers can work with iOS 7 concepts to make something really nice and subtly interesting. I hope that people do experiment more with ideas like this, rather than keep pining for the kitsch that was the worst of skeuomorphism. Let’s move into the future here, already, c’mon.
