What’s Wrong with Slack’s New Logo
Slack got a new logo and we don’t feel great about it.
We came into the office Wednesday morning and our designer pointed out in our team’s “random” Slack channel that the company had recently changed their logo.
For anyone not familiar with the app, Slack is an instant messaging app that a boatload of companies use to stay in touch with their colleagues. Her exact words were:
Slack got a new logo and I DON’T FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT.
The majority of our team shared her same sentiment (except for one team member who said “I mean, I’m not a design person, but I kinda like it.”)—there’s always one. But what exactly is wrong with Slack’s new logo?
One of our team members said it best when he said that the old logo was “iconic,” which it was! The hashtag is a great symbol and has come to mean so much more than the “number sign”. It’s representative of modern culture. It’s used throughout social media. Its modern style relates to the nature of slack; conversation with friends and co-workers. You don’t quite get that feeling with the new logo.
In an effort to clear things up, Slack released the following blog to explain the change:
Our first logo was created before the company launched. It was distinctive, and playful, and the octothorpe (or pound sign, or hash, or whatever name by which you know it) resembled the same character that you see in front of channels in our product.
It was also extremely easy to get wrong. It was 11 different colors — and if placed on any color other than white, or at the wrong angle (instead of the precisely prescribed 18º rotation), or with the colors tweaked wrong, it looked terrible.
But, like all things in life, change is inevitable. Rebranding is always a risky move, albeit sometimes necessary.
We still love you, Slack ❤️
