Retro Redesign: Our most used apps go back in time
Have you ever heard someone say something to the effect of “that is SO 70’s!”, and not been entirely sure what they mean? The Bento Design Team is here to help, and hopefully have a little fun. We are kicking off a series of posts exploring design throughout different eras and digging into what makes design from certain eras stand out. In each post of this series we will take some of our most-used apps and brands and reimagine them as hospitality concepts in different era’s. To kick things off, we will be reimagining some of our most-used applications as 70’s diner-inspired brands! But first we need to figure out what design trends define the 70’s and how we can use them to translate these brands across decades.
When most people think of the 70’s they think of bell bottoms, crazy colors, afros, and an overabundance of the word ‘groovy’, but what did the 70’s look like in terms of branding? We’ve identified a few unifying aesthetic trends from the 70’s that we will use to translate some well-known brands BACK IN TIME.
A few of the ‘70’s design trends we’ve identified
- Simple shapes with bold accents
- Bright, clashing colors, and many colors used in each piece
- Freeform typography, heavy use of script font and exaggerated characters
- Repetitive patterns, checkers, grids, sunburst backgrounds
- Thick borders, drop shadows, big bold line
- Organic shapes and borders
- Heavy geometric stylings
Adobe Diner
Adobe Diner would have been a cozy breakfast spot with classic ’70s wood paneling and cracked green vinyl booths. For my redesign, I drew inspiration from design elements I saw frequently used in the ’70s, such as freeform typography, borders, and thick drop shadows. I kept the text in a container to reference the square frame in Adobe’s actual logo, but made it circular with borders to dually represent a record disc and a diner plate. I replaced the superscript dot above the lowercase “i” with a flower to include a subtle hippie motif.
Written and Created By: Chelsea Davis, Junior Web Designer
Spotify Diner
Thinking about how Spotify would have fit into the ‘70’s, vinyl, and cassette tapes come to mind. Just out of the era of Jukeboxes, Spotify Diner would have been a retro futuristic space for classic diner food, music, and late-night dancing. I took inspiration from the heavy gradients, geometric shapes, and groovy typefaces commonly used in the ‘70’s. The actual logo is a very simple green circle with 3 lines that resemble sound waves, so I focused on using a rule of three throughout the logo. The flowing 3-layer gradient around the logo also reaches down into a vinyl record shape with grooves that mirrors the actual slack logo “sound waves.”
Written and Created By: Lindsey Robinson, Junior Web Designer
Slack Drive-In
To me, the 70’s is synonymous with the hippie movement. When I was growing up there was always “Free Love”, psychedelic, groovy art around the house. Naturally, when I think of 70’s design aesthetics, my mind goes to big curly crazy fonts with lots of colors, borders and silhouettes. The Slack drive-in would be a place where people can hang out and socialize, brightly lit and with a lot of colors around for a fun and energetic vibe. Slack’s red, yellow, green and blue color scheme is perfect for a psychedelic, groovy, hippie-style application with big bold lines and a classic ’70s script font, for an inviting and upbeat logo that reflects the drive-in culture of old.
Written and Created By: Kai Malowany, Web Design Team Lead
Hopefully we have shed some light on what the defining design trends of the ’70s were and shown off some fun re-imaginings of well known logos. If you enjoyed what you saw here make sure to come back and check out the next post in our RETRO REDESIGN series! Stay groovy!
