Design Analysis: Discord’s Rebrand Past Gaming
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Redesigns can be scary projects to tackle. Knowing that the projects you’ve worked so hard and passionately on, just might not be as appealing as you thought they would in the eyes of other designers, is something everyone might hold fear of. You could spend hundreds of hours on these projects, only for the internet to combust into complete flames, nitpicking every detail that isn’t appealing to their design tastes.
It isn’t an uncommon occurrence for the internet to poke fun of an application’s visual and interface redesigns. Instagram’s logo redesign in 2016 saw millions of users criticizing the change to a flat, gradient icon. Snapchat’s UX redesign in 2018 saw celebrities like Kylie Jenner criticizing their mobile layout changes, leading to online petitions garnering millions of backers pleading the company to revert their changes.
While the criticisms of Instagram and Snapchat’s redesigns have slowly died down, there’s one thing we can take away from these events. Visual rebrandings that stray away from their initial conception will, inevitably, garner some kind of resistance.
Today, we’ll take a look at Discord’s redesign — their reasoning for rebranding, how they did, and understanding its criticisms online. (Spoiler alert: it has to do with a change of focus in their audience.)
Discord: Building Community
Discord — having been created as an alternative to Skype and Teamspeak — was originally designed to appeal to an audience of gamers. As time went on, however, the platform has amassed millions of users looking to use the platform outside of gaming. From art communities to study groups, Discord quickly found itself leading the competition as a platform for communicating with your friends online.
Since then, Discord has centered its focus on developing for its wide range of appeal past its original usage for gaming. To reflect this, Discord has begun releasing features and updates outside of gaming-centric focused ones. (School hubs, threads, and stages, to name a few.)
Reimagining itself, bigger
Recently, to celebrate Discord’s sixth anniversary, the company announced that they would release a visual rebranding to the platform, with changes to their logo, typefaces, and color scheming.
The visual update, however, was met with a fair amount of controversy, with thousands of users online expressing distaste for the platform’s new visuals. Some users felt that their platform strayed too far away from its intended purpose of gaming, while others felt their added vibrancy felt too child-like and was catered heavily towards younger audiences.
But is this criticism warranted? Did the changes they made feel too stark compared to their initial vision for the redesign? Let’s start by taking a look at their rebranding, and how they did.
World 1–1: Landing Page + Characters
Notice how these character designs shifted from fantasy-inspired ones into more modern, hip ones? It definitely feels like they’re jumping to designing characters that can appeal more towards people of different hobbies, versus an audience that might associate more closely with gaming pastimes.
Here’s an extra look at Discord’s landing page in 2017. This, in comparison to their pages from 2020 and 2021, makes their push past gaming even more apparent, now that most of the gaming iconography feels much more subtle in comparison to one another.
The stark change in character designs creates a stronger narrative of Discord’s usage as a platform for everyone to communicate with — not just gamers. I find the new designs to be appealing! While their designs are more simplistic compared to their predecessors, there still exists a lot of charm and vibrancy that comes from them.
World 1–2: Logo + Color Palette
At a glance, Discord’s logo has remained relatively intact since its redesign. While there hasn’t been an official statement as to what their logo, Clyde, is supposed to symbolize, most have assumed it to be a characterized representation of a gaming controller.
I enjoy the redesigned logo! While I can see how it represents a gaming controller, I’ve always seen it more of a mascot, if anything. The subtle shifts of the eye’s position make it feel even more mascot-like, as well. It’s very cute!
In comparing the new color changes, there’s a very noticeable jump in saturation. While the older, OG Blurple might lean a bit towards technology with its theming, the newer Blurple’s added saturation feels more vibrant and welcoming, appealing to a wider audience. It feels a lot fitting with Discord’s brand appeal and efforts to keeping in touch with younger audiences.
World 1–3: Typefaces
Finally, let’s take a look at the final aspect of Discord’s redesign. Ginto Nord, being their new display font, is a wide sans serif used in their lockups, headers, and advertising. The change to Ginto Nord was a large point of contention among many users online, with many feeling it maybe strayed too far away past it’s original look. (People online are ruthless…)
While it is quite a big jump from its predecessor, I think that the change to Ginto Nord reflects Discord’s push towards a wider audience appeal. The previous font, a custom typeface using Uni Sans as its base, has a sharp, geometric styling compared to their newer bubbly, rounded edges. The shift from all caps to title case also feels more friendly and welcoming, too!
Understanding the Criticism
Discord’s goal with the rebranding was to develop a more welcoming feel to the app, with “playfulness” and “energetic” as keywords in mind. Because of their change in audience, Discord has changed its visual identity to reflect this, straying a bit further away from visuals that might imply its usage as a purely gaming-focused app.
This is the root of a lot of the criticism that the company is currently receiving. Long-term users who initially used the platform for gaming feel as if the redesign is straying away from their initial promise of being a gaming platform to compete with other applications.
Discord’s audience has grown tremendously past its initial focus of gaming communities, and it only makes sense to re-envision themselves to work with these changes. Kushaan Shah, growth marketing manager at Livongo, wrote an engaging article about the topic, noting:
Despite how we feel, there are lots of common reasons for a redesign… If you expand to new markets or a new audience who won’t identify with your brand’s cultural significance, it may be wise to have a redesign.
Quite a fitting motive for Discord, isn’t it?
Closing Thoughts + Opinions
I found the changes overall, to be quite appealing. The added vibrancy in their color scheming contributes the Discord’s values of playfulness and relatability. The logo’s added simplification makes the logo feel a bit cuter and friendly — with their new font and title case display adding to it.
I can understand why people might dislike the new changes in Discord’s visuals. I mean, seeing brands like Smucker’s completely leap away from their previous logo certainly leaves me baffled and scratching my head in confusion. Even if I think everything Discord did was reasonable, why shouldn’t others be able to feel the opposite? In the end, we all have our own design tastes and preferences, along with different levels attachment that we hold to different companies and brands. (Even if our opinions might get a little pitchfork and torch-y.)
With this concluding my first blog post, I hope it was at the very least, bearable! Thanks for reading!
