It’s no stretch to say that Facebook could do with a bit of a rebranding. The company has come under fire for the social media side of its business, and in particular how it handles divisive topics like hate speech, misinformation, deep fakes and most recently political ads. As such it’s no surprise that a new Facebook logo surfaced earlier this week.
Before you start worrying that the blue and white logo you’ve come to know from the site is leaving, the new design is instead for the Facebook parent company, which features other big platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp among others in its stable.
Facebook revealed its new logo via an official announcement yesterday, which is also said to showcase how the brand has evolved in its 15 years from initially being an application.
“Today, we’re updating our company branding to be clearer about the products that come from Facebook. We’re introducing a new company logo and further distinguishing the Facebook company from the Facebook app, which will keep its own branding,” writes Facebook’s chief marketing officer, Antonio Lucio.
“The new branding was designed for clarity, and uses custom typography and capitalization to create visual distinction between the company and app,” he adds.
As you can tell from the colour-changing logo above, the design for the new Facebook logo has been kept quite simple, with the different colours denoting the different platforms – blue for the Facebook website, green for the WhatsApp messaging service and so on.
The company will be introducing this branding at the bottom of many of its applications, while utilising this new font across many of its services such as the upcoming Calibra digital wallet or Oculus.
Why Facebook has gone this route is still a little unclear, especially if the basic look, feel and experience of its different applications and services are remaining the same. It is also unclear whether this change in branding will have the desired effect, particularly as the company wrestles with tougher issues outside of fonts and colours.
“This brand change is a way to better communicate our ownership structure to the people and businesses who use our services to connect, share, build community and grow their audiences,” concludes Lucio.