Rethinking Instagram’s Redesign: More than a Glyph and Gradient
One of the most talked about redesigns of recent memory debuted on May 11, 2016 and there is a reason we are still talking about it: it wasn’t good enough. Its not a bad design. In fact there is an amazing amount of design thinking behind the new look and logo, but for a social media super star we expected more. We wanted it to be better.
When the redesign was introduced, you didn’t have to go far to find the ranging opinions on the new design. Every major media had an article about it, Twitter timelines blew up, Slack groups of design friends were buzzing, hell even some of my fantasy football friends were all weighing in about this new look and logo.
Whether you are interested in marketing, branding, logo design, UI design, PR or just use the photo sharing app on your phone, there is no doubt Instagram’s rebranding has impacted you.
The reaction to Instagram’s change was immediate, critical, and polarizing. Some loved it. A lot hated it. But if we dig a little deeper, there are a few key points we can learn from it. How did the design team get to this new identity. Where it will take them in the future. And why do we care so much.
A New Design
Without a doubt Instagram was due for a new look. For a company that built its brand using the logo of a retro, brown, polaroid-esque camera I can see why they wanted a refresh. Instagram needed to adopt to a new era of photography. There is social media savvy generation who have spent the last 6 years posting, liking, and sharing their favorite images on the app. The association to an antiquated polaroid camera no longer resonated with a large portion of the audience or the product itself. It was the perfect time to introduce a new look.
Reading blog posts and having conversations with my peers about the redesign, the timing of the rebrand is often a critical point that is overlooked. It is unfortunate, because in 2016 there were so many great examples of redesigns and Instagram had an opportunity to make an impact across the industry, but it feels like they swung and missed.
When there is a disconnect between the the product, the audience, and the way a company thinks about itself, that is an excellent time to use a rebranding to create alignment across the company. There is no argument to Instagram’s popularity, but this was their chance to solidify itself as a brand/company/design leader.
Imagine for a second they unveiled an amazing new design that people adored…the conversation would have been a much more sophisticated discussion about the refined UI design, the connection between product and it’s millions of users, and the impact of design in an industry that is fueled by visual aesthetics. Instead we are left with this:
Before we bash on them too hard for a fresh new look it is important to note that Instagram is still an incredibly a young company. They only launched the app in 2010. This blows my mind! 2010 seems so recent, but I can barely remember Instagram not being in my world. They are one of the founding fathers of social media and a cornerstone of the tech landscape… But are we asking too much from a 7 year old company and their first attempt at changing their logo? Have they earned enough good will with users for us to forgiven them and endure clicking on this clashing vibrant new app icon?
Here is another way to think about Instagram as a company: A lot like it’s core audience, Instagram is also a millennial. They are just like a twenty-something trying to figure out its place in the world. They are confident, optimistic about the future, young enough to make bold decisions, and desperately clinging to their youth.
I can just imagine the leaders of Instagram’s marketing and design teams huddled around a conference table planning their next bold move that will capture that coveted 18–25 audience…when they suddenly realized that 2017 was just months away. They’re almost a decade old. They still have a polaroid as their icon. Everyone panics.
It is the same chaos a twenty-something feels thinking 30 is just around the corner. And to counteract that emotion, the team dreamed up an identity to recapture their youth. The timing was right to create a new look and logo, but the execution just felt rushed.
In a Medium post introducing the new look Instagram’s Head of Design Ian Spelter stated that the goal behind the redesign was “to create a look that would represent the community’s full range of expression — past, present, and future.” I like my version a lot more than the PR approved, spin zone words given to us by Spelter. They were young and energetic and wanted to make a splash. Unfortunately, when you’re a company as revered as Instagram, making a splash isn’t enough.
The Future
It doesn’t matter what the app icon looks like, Instagram isn’t going anywhere. Since the acquisition by Facebook in 2012 Instagram has become one of the fundamental apps to have one your smartphone. The numbers are staggering:
- Over 500 million monthly active users
- 300 million daily active users
- 40 billion+ photos to date
- 95 million photos/videos posted per day
- 4.2 billion Likes per day.
After looking at these stats it makes a lot more sense why the sudden shift in visual identity caused the uproar it did. With hundreds of millions of eyes on the app per day any change they make will jump out. But the reverse is also true. Since we interact with the app so frequently, the identity has an insanely high amount of impressions and it grows on us. Suddenly the vivid colors and the new glyph resonate as being “Instagram” more than the past photorealistic brown icon ever did. The color they chose or the curve of the icon isn’t going to stop us from using the app because the product itself is so good we have engrained it into our lives.
This rebrand is still fresh, so plenty of opinions are out there, but you’ve got to commend Instagram for pushing themselves, thinking 3–5 years ahead, and taking a risk.
There are two major improvements I could see Instagram making in 2017 that could help mend all the angst its users have felt since May. Instagram doesn’t need to compete for our attention, it already has use tapping and scrolling and posting millions of times a day. Instead of attention, Instagram’s rebranding should have focused on usability.
The first improvement would be to keep all the existing elements, but simply change their current app icon. This would take minimal effort as far as execution, a simple update would implement the change, but would see wide spread relief to anyone who has the Instagram app on their home screen. Below are two alternative options I made for comparison.
Option #1 is a simplified white icon that is the inverse of the current icon. This choice would fit perfectly with the other Instagram icons for Layout, Hyperlapse, and Boomerang while instantly being recognized as Instagram with the glyph and color…just without all the eyesore. (it’s worth pointing out that Instagram now uses this look as its own profile thumbnail, which hopefully means they are moving in this direction)
Option #2 is a modified version of the glyph. Keep the same gradient fill but instead of using a glyph with stroke weight that loses its impact when shrunken down the new icon can stand its own next to the Twitter bird or Facebook F.
Notice how nicely the new icon options would fit in context to an iPhone ecosystem. Suddenly there is harmony with the surrounding apps on the home screen. The bright oranges and pinks or the logo stand out against all the other app icons like a zit on my screen. With some additional whitespace the icon suddenly aligns to the successful styles of Youtube, Google, and even the Medium app.
The second option for improvement to fix Instagram’s icon would be to assign a single color to its icon rather than a three color gradient. This is a much more dramatic action and one that will likely never happen, but the evidence is on display for why it could help alleviate a pain point caused by the new identity.
Imagine for a second, how many people and companies have Instagram accounts they want to promote, showcase, and link to. You often see these used on the footers of websites or in advertising, but Instagram’s new icon and color palette was not created with this use in mind at all. The only solution their brand guidelines offer is to use an all white glyph. But that isn’t good enough.
The glyph loses its impact when placed next to the solid Twitter bird or Facebook “f” or YouTube playbutton. And there is absolutely no way a brand will place the bright multi color icon on their already branded designs. The gradient of the Instagram logo barely works on white or grey, much less placed on any other popular brand color like red, blue, green, etc. Why are there not alternatives to this? Why is there not a single color black option? Why did the design team not focus on making their identity usable?
Take this one step further, why is no one using the new Instagram logo?!? Of the top companies in the world, barely any of them are using the redesigned Instagram identity. I searched through numerous home pages of the Interbrand 100 Best Global Companies and the result is daunting for someone passionate about design or branding. Below are a few examples of how these companies are actually using Instagram’s new identity on their websites.
Of the 8 detailed below Disney (the top right example) is the only company using the current Instagram glyph released in May 2016. But the glyph isn’t even correct, it is a dark blue color pulled from Instagram’s previous style guide. Like Toyota and McDonalds (the middle two examples on the right) these companies have reverted to the old color of Instagram’s identity since the multi-color gradient didn’t work on their site. Shockingly, the rest of the companies didn’t even bother with the new glyph and stuck with Instagram’s older logo instead.
It would be amazing to see Instagram take a small step back and settle on a simplified color palette for the company. Even if it is something similar to AOL, Google, Microsoft, or other companies that have multiple colors in their identity, there are ways to create the effect Instagram is going for while still being able to be used online or in cross promotional marketing. Color is a vital element of a brand identity, but when your brand doesn’t have a color it suddenly loses the recognition and usability you would expect from a company like Instagram.
The most frustrating part of Instagram’s new identity is that even though it is forward thinking, fresh, and exciting, it steals the spotlight from the real star of the redesign: the new UI of the app.
This should have been the talking point of every single article written about Instagram’s innovative new identity, but instead we are stuck talking about gradients & hues and leaving the gorgeous user interface design to become an afterthought. This is really a shame and something I’ll dive deeper into on a later post since it deserves way more attention and care than being at the end of this piece, but the UI of Instagram is the best part of the entire new visual identity.
“While the icon is a colorful doorway into the Instagram app, once inside the app, we believe the color should come directly from the community’s photos and videos. We stripped the color and noise from surfaces where people’s content should take center stage, and boosted color on other surfaces like sign up flows and home screens.”–Ian Splater, Head of Design at Instagram
Once you have clicked the way too bright app icon and made your way into Instagram the only time you ever see the stupid gradient again is in minimal strokes around stories. It is no where else. Think about that. For the amount of attention given to a color only to be seen in a stroke around a story of the entire product shows to me there was a disconnect between the goals for product design and marketing design at Instagram.
Forget the gradient and the logo and focus on the UI of the app and we are left with a gorgeous, sophisticated, refined canvas ready for 2017. Ready for the “full range of expression” of the Instagram community. Ready to get to work.
And the white canvas and a minimal monochromatic design really does work. Its simplicity allows the images users post to be separated from the technology and the company hosting them. This is the biggest success of the redesign and something I wish carried through to the surface of the button you click to get into the product more than ever…instead we’re left with 1000s of words about gradients and colors and iconography… *insert eye-roll emoji*
There is a disconnect between the design and the audience. There is a disconnect between the icon and the user interface. And there is a disconnect between the usability of the icon and the thousands of people who want to promote their own Instagram accounts. Even though these all seem negative, I’m convinced there is still a lot to learn from it.
Instagram needed a new look and logo to move into 2017, but unfortunately they didn’t prioritize the wider usability and influence their branding would have on millions of people a day. Without a doubt the Instagram redeisgn is one of the Most Influential Rebrands of 2016 but not for the right reasons. Let’s hope other companies, agencies, and designers learn from these mistakes and push forward innovative new brands that work for both the company and their audience.
Look & Logo is a project dedicated to the design thinking that fuels creative visual identities, brands, and logos. Follow along on Twitter or Instagram to see the latest looks & logos or follow along on Medium for more in depth discussions on design. If there is work you would like to see featured or reviewed, want to talk design, or just want to say hi, feel free to get in touch.
