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New logo
- m_ke 8y agoI wonder how long it took them to go through this redesign.
- lifekaizen 8y agoFeels like preparation for going public.
- lgregg 8y agoThat or starting a new major product offering, visually they're no longer boxed in.
- skwb 8y agoJust reloaded my work slack. For a good couple of moments I thought my clumsy fingers accidentally changed the the color balance on windows.
- everdev 8y agoThe brighter purple on the sidebar is too high contrast for my eyes. Not a fan.
- daveFNbuck 8y agoYou can customize the colors in your settings, and your changes apply across all platforms and devices.
- guessmyname 8y agoIndeed, I freaked out a little bit as well. Interestingly, some Slack groups that I’m part of still have the old colors. Theme: Aubergine *(Old)* Normal Color: #4d394b New Background Color: #3f0e3f Reference: https://i.imgur.com/RtUXm6V.png https://i.imgur.com/RtUXm6V.png
- Corrado 8y agoI just powered on my new Pixel phone and noticed that the Slack icon was different. It took me a few minutes to figure out what happened; I thought my phone's screen was messed up! :O
- johanlejdung 8y agoI like it, looks very "Googly" though. I hope they release new desktop and mobile apps soon
- nitrix 8y agoThe "TL;DR" at the bottom should be at the top!
- reilly3000 8y agoThe logo works, but that purple background in the app... it will take some getting used to for sure.
- ProAm 8y agoIt's always a little sad to me when technology companies make sure a big deal about logos, marketing, and brand. Im not sure if I disrespect them more but Id rather such focus be on the technology aspect of what they do vs the look at the font we made, or the logo marketing put together.
- davidivadavid 8y agoIt's not an either-or thing. Slack engineers are still working on the technology aspects.
- mikro2nd 8y agoHmmmm... yeh, but when any company starts messing with their branding, it frequently turns out to be not a good sign.
- themoonbus 8y agoHow do you figure-do you have any specific cases you're thinking of? Like the platform itself, the brand and positioning of a company is constantly evolving.
- davidivadavid 8y agoMeh, it depends. Large companies often do it. Microsoft has rebranded their visual assets a bunch of times. Doesn't seem like it was particularly ominous. Some companies in very competitive verticals are often built on their branding. Some companies do waste a lot of money on debatable rebranding efforts (Uber / HP, etc.). It's a mixed bag.
- mscasts 8y agoLooks good imo. Not much else to say about it. Good job!
- jcdavis 8y agoPSA: If the new sidebar is a little too aggressively purple for you (it was for me), the "Aubergine classic" sidebar is the old style
- farslan 8y agoThanks! I was just wondering why the contrast was so sharp after the update.
- jeromegv 8y agoAaaah thank you! Much better. Not a big fan of icon, but that's just an icon. The sidebar was bothering me more.
- jdpigeon 8y agoOh god it's so purple
- citizens 8y agoThanks! First thing I did this morning was re-calibrate my monitors...didn't realize there was a rebrand. Whoops :)
- davefp 8y agoIt looks a lot like the Google Photos logo turned upside down to me.
- partiallypro 8y agoOr the Microsoft logo with circles. I honestly think it looks terrible (the Slack logo, not the Microsoft logo.)
- harrylepotter 8y agolooks like 4 people circle-jerking. Or maybe that's just my foul mind.
- sz4kerto 8y agoEvery company must have a logo with four colors -- some variant of red-green-blue-yellow. It should also fit into a square, and the colors must stay separate, splitting the square into 4 parts if possible.
- adventured 8y agoIt's interesting that most of the prominent brands don't follow such rules. They overwhelmingly stick to just two colors (or one in many cases). Amazon.com, Apple, McDonald's, Walmart, Fedex, UPS, Nike, Coca Cola, 3M, Target, Visa, Square, PayPal, Facebook, Uber, Lyft, Twitter, YouTube, Netflix, Samsung, Sony, Intel, Cisco, Oracle, IBM, SAP, Starbucks, Lululemon, Under Armour, NY Times, American Express, GAP, Best Buy, Costco, Exxon
- adfm 8y agoRainbows and unicorns... Apple (pre-Miyake), Microsoft, Google
- nkantar 8y agoWhat's the rationale? I was thought quite the opposite for logos (re: colors): fewer colors is better, and the logo should be instantly recognizable in monochrome. It being something a layperson could draw reasonably well is also a good thing. Edit: Did I just miss the sarcasm train here? It's very possible.
- sjwright 8y agoYes, it's definitely sarcasm.
- proee 8y agoIs this good advice or satire?
- marpstar 8y agoI can't imagine this wasn't 100% sarcasm...
- SCdF 8y agoMore interesting for the HN crowd I think is the article from the actual design company that did the redesign: https://www.pentagram.com/work/slack https://www.pentagram.com/work/slack
- bluetidepro 8y agoAt first I thought this was interesting, mainly because of all the design talent that is at Slack already. But then I realized, it was probably just an easier move to get an outside company to do it and make it a lot less political than had it been done in-house at Slack. And well, Pentagram is also huge, to be fair.
- christkv 8y agoDid they identify more like a gazelle, jaguar or leopard.
- mythz 8y agoAgreed, they have a pretty impressive and aesthetically pleasing portfolio: https://www.pentagram.com/work/ https://www.pentagram.com/work/
- sf_rob 8y agoWow, the hovering rapid image preview are really annoying.
- giarc 8y agoYet at the same time, some of the logos in the Slack work are really bad. https://pentagram-production.imgix.net/618d5092-a542-4dae-bd27-a3afb4bcc12d/mb_slack_04.jpg?w=2000&fm=jpg&q=70&auto=format https://pentagram-production.imgix.net/618d5092-a542-4dae-bd... One is just colons added to the name and the wave emoji. The one beside it looks like it's from a 1997 tech company. The whole bottom row seems like it should be titled "We created these to show what not to do."
- rahkiin 8y agoWith these I always feel like they just made some shitty ones after the job was finished just for the ‘look we did a whole design and thought out of the box’ articles like these
- pedrocx486 8y agoThis new logo is a departure from their old art style that was everywhere in their old project, the game Glitch. (Interesting that it was exactly 11 different colors, like the 11 Giants in Glitch).
- simlevesque 8y agoI saw the favicon change and I thought a plugin was messing with the page.
- onetimemanytime 8y agotoo complicated. The mind goes to the left and stays there. Not that "slack" is not read but still
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- coding123 8y agolooks jizzy I'm sorry but I'm just being honest, made me think of a porn shoot.
- phinnaeus 8y agoI like the new icon, but prefer the old font.
- myth_buster 8y agoLooks like a derivative of this. I feel like I've seen a company using this logo but am spacing out. https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-arrows-logo-designs-image18888634 https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-arrows-logo-designs-...
- slg 8y agoI just refreshed my desktop app and I have to say I am not crazy about the new default avatars. It is entirely possible I just got accustomed to my team's collection of colors and shapes, but the current ones have much less variety resulting in them all blending together. I wonder if this is a partially intentional dark pattern to get us to move away from the default avatars.
- shdh 8y agoWay less variety.
- Larrikin 8y agoThem being crap on purpose was also speculated on in my company's general as well. They're so generic now
- jdpigeon 8y agoThis to me is hands-down the worst part of the rebrand. Harder to distinguish (why is everyone in my company's default avatar just different colors of the same shapes?) and in many cases probably took away something that people had become attached to.
- guessmyname 8y agoCongratulations Slack! To me, it seems a bit useless though, but I don’t have any relevant knowledge about Marketing nor Corporate Design to provide useful feedback. There’s probably some value in a re-brand even though the company is not facing any criticism for their colors, logo, and slogan. > 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 18° rotation), or with the colors tweaked wrong, it looked terrible. I stand corrected, these are good reasons to justify the rebrand. That being said, I felt a bit scared this morning when I opened Slack and found that the colors were slightly different to what they used to be, I freaked and thought someone had hacked my corporate account, then I went looking for answers and found this post, my heart was immediately at peace. I hope this change brings them more opportunities to grow. --- EDIT: Interestingly, their “Release Notes” says version 3.3.6 [1] but 3.3.3 [2] in the download page. The :slack: emoji is also showing the old logo. I wonder if they are going to change “slackbot” avatar as well. [1] https://slack.com/release-notes/osx https://slack.com/release-notes/osx [2] https://slack.com/downloads/osx https://slack.com/downloads/osx
- outworlder 8y ago> I freaked and thought someone had hacked my corporate account I don't understand. I had a coworker that had similar reactions to things. "My stuff is missing" = immediately wants to call the authorities, without asking the roommate. Which had moved the stuff due to some petty squabble. Similarly, this. You had default avatars. Default avatars got changed. Why would someone go to such trouble and make them immediately known? It is more likely to be a change by Slack themselves. Because they provide the default avatars. Now, if you got custom avatars, and they all got replaced with some activist banner? Ok, hacking gets higher probability. Not trying to criticize, I just want to understand the line of thought that leads to this.
- rmnoon 8y agoIs anybody else reminded of the old Hasbro electronic Simon game? Same 4 colors, same basic orientation.
- Kiro 8y agoWith f.lux the new default purple looks horrible.
- frostyj 8y agoLike, why am I seeing this on hacker news.
- explainplease 8y agoShouldn't these multi-million-dollar design firms have a checklist that includes: * [ ] Doesn't look like 4 sets of you-know-what arranged in a circle * [ ] Whitespace between elements doesn't look like swastika Someone mentioned these, and now I can't unsee them. Way to go, Slack.
- dcole2929 8y agoThis seems like it tracks with the rumours/suspicions that they are planning to go public soon. It's likely that the impetus for their stated desire to to clean up and consolidate their branding, could be that aforementioned upcoming IPO.
- ricardobeat 8y ago[warning: cannot be unseen] There is a swastika hiding in the negative space in the middle of the logo.
- reneherse 8y agoGood eye. Swastika patterns are always something to beware of when creating a pinwheel based design, whether in a logo, decoration, architecture, or even just pinwheels.
- vokep 8y agoOr we could just normalize it as just another shape.
- martythemaniak 8y agoYou really gotta work for it. Also, that would be the Buddhist rather than the Nazi swastika.
- evanb 8y agoI'm sure a rational discussion about co-opted symbology is what what Slack wants associated with their new icon/logo, rather than many people's visceral gut reaction that is almost certainly independent of the sense of rotation.
- unethical_ban 8y ago1) It's not entirely obvious; I had to search for it. 2) It's literally a different pattern than the Nazi swastika. The shorter portions break right in the Nazi symbol, left in this image.
- evanb 8y ago1) "Not entirely obvious! A great place for a dogwhistle!" I'm obviously not suggesting that whatever graphic designer intentionally slipped a Nazi symbol into Slack's new logo. But, much like the arrow in FedEx, once you see it it's hard to unsee. 2) Most people can't tell you which way the outer parts of a Nazi swastika go and which way non-Nazi swastikas go. That's what I meant about sense of rotation in my comment above. Moreover, most people can't immediately reconstruct a logo to begin with, though they can recognize one. But something like this https://imgur.com/a/CZWtXez https://imgur.com/a/CZWtXez passes at first glance and is much more swastika-y.
- tvanantwerp 8y agoThis feels so generic. I get the problem they're referencing with too many colors and not working in all contexts. But the human mind being what it is, I never had a problem connecting "rainbow-colored #" with "Slack". This...this is just some kind of blob. I couldn't tell this apart from a big pharma company, or some kind of conglomerate that makes everything from toasters to jet planes. I'm reminded of the Philip Morris rebrand to Altria, even as far as a generic colorful squarish logo. It's gone from "# means Slack" to "I guess that's Slack...?"
- radicalriddler 8y agoWow. So you're telling me; that the icon that you've been viewing as the symbol for Slack over the last couple of years looked more familiar than the new logo they released today. That's mind boggling
- seandougall 8y agoNo, I believe the point was exactly the opposite: that the new logo feels too immediately familiar, because it's so reminiscent of countless other red-amber-green-blue tech logos from Windows 3.0 on.
- tir 8y agoAgreed, the '#' had a long history of indicating a channel, like on IRC, and by extension text-based communication.
- eppsilon 8y agoAnd for those not familiar with IRC, the association of "#" with Twitter hashtags says "communication" too.
- Infernal 8y agoAnd for those not familiar with early Twitter, the hashtag was not a feature of the platform, but a shorthand way to indicate a topic. This of course was recognized and formalized by Twitter soon after, but I find it fascinating that it was a feature essentially developed by the users and more simply recognized by the platform later.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- otterley 8y agoI miss the octothorpe (#) -- it was a clever reminder of Slack's origins in IRC, where channel names start with the same symbol. (Technically, in IRC, they could be prefixed with an ampersand (&) as well, but nobody ever did that. Great for making super-secret channels, though.)
- spike021 8y agoOr channel names prefixed with double ##'s.
- iaabtpbtpnn 8y agoIn case anyone's wondering about the difference, a &channel is local to the IRC server it's created on, while a #channel is globally usable across the IRC network.
- omouse 8y agoThis was the cool part as others have noted. For the techies and nerds, # = IRC and it's like "cool, a nod to tech we know and love and now we have a replacement for". For the Twitter or Facebook generation it's a hashtag, "cool, a nod to something I use everyday and love using."
- DelTaco 8y agoSince Slack changed default profile icons too, I recreated mine in CSS: https://codepen.io/anon/pen/VqNXXP https://codepen.io/anon/pen/VqNXXP
- joelrunyon 8y agoLogo aside, I appreciate the quick blog post much better than the old Uber brand which tried a bit too hard to explain every thought behind each part of the rebrand. https://www.uber.design/case-studies/rebrand https://www.uber.design/case-studies/rebrand
- QML 8y agoimo, it's better to get a longer post that provides motivation and idea behind the redesign. Slack just told us the reason why they're doing it -- for consistency -- but doesn't explain how they landed at their symbol at all.
- ericol 8y agoI thought TL;DRs were supposed to be at the top of a post.
- lovethatchili 8y agoWhy does it look so swastika-esque? Who's pockets did Slack fill up with cash to design this thing? It's like they literally took the old logo and said: "How can we make this look more like a swastika?". Makes you wonder if there's someone internally with a hidden agenda...
- lovethatchili 8y agoIt actually makes sense - they were banning Iranian users recently[0]. How much more nefarious will Slack become? Only time will tell... [0] https://boingboing.net/2018/12/20/slack-reportedly-bans-iranian.html https://boingboing.net/2018/12/20/slack-reportedly-bans-iran...
- DeonPenny 8y agoUsing that pre-IPO money I see
- polote 8y agoWhat about the features that existed in the last favicon ? We used to be able to see if there was new messages, or if someone tagged you, directly in the favicon without opening slack, now it is impossible. You are forced to go check slack all the time to see if there is something new. I'm disappointed :'(
- oplav 8y agoThat's still working for me, although it looks a little different than before. New messages show up as a white circle in the upper right. Being tagged shows up as a red circle in the same spot.
- hippish 8y agoI guess it might work with the app. Running slack as a pinned tab in my browser however, it's close to invisible https://imgur.com/a/VgL2fMu https://imgur.com/a/VgL2fMu
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- simplecomplex 8y agoIf it’s not broken, don’t fix it. If you have to argue whether it’s an improvement, it’s not an improvement.
- fuckfascists 8y agoWhy does it look so swastika-esque? Who's pockets did Slack fill up with cash to design this thing? It's like they literally took the old logo and said: "How can we make this look more like a swastika?". Makes you wonder if there's someone internally with a hidden agenda...oh yeah, slack was recently banning Iranian users...makes sense now.
- lovethatchili 8y agoSo why exactly is it a swastika? I'll be launching an official investigation on Slack soon...seems like they're descending more and more into fascism everyday...not on my watch...
- mfkp 8y agoI think it's supposed to look like little message bubbles, but I get kind of a "squirt emoji" vibe from it. Edit: apparently HN doesn't support emojis. https://emojipedia.org/splashing-sweat-symbol/ https://emojipedia.org/splashing-sweat-symbol/
- seandougall 8y agoOhhhhh, message bubbles! That explains so much. Except Slack's UI doesn't use message bubbles. I wonder, is this a signal that that's about to change, or is it just artistic license?
- mromanuk 8y agoGot the same impression
- tlynchpin 8y agoyep squirt emoji was my first reaction, glad I'm not the only one. Unlike Grafana and Loki I don't expect they're gonna see these comments and amend it in the next couple hours.
- gumby 8y agoChanging the logo doesn't help our team. I wish they'd used that money to get group calls working on iOS, speed up app on MacOS etc.
- fermienrico 8y agoFunding the space program doesn't help the infrastructure, education and much needed aid for Opioid epidemic that's rampant in our country; therefore, we shouldn't fund NASA. This is a wrong way of thinking. You may have heard of the term "Throwing more developers at a problem doesn't help or too many cooks in the kitchen." Slack should absolutely work on those issues - I agree, but not by sacrificing the rest of the business needs such as Branding.
- jnmandal 8y agoWhy would they chose a swastika for a logo?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- lovethatchili 8y agoExactly, it's quite literally and deliberately a swastika. I've been trying to comment this, but FascistHackerNews keeps flagging my comments.
- iqy 8y ago>Firstly, it’s not change for the sake of change. Actually yes, it is.
- trynewideas 8y agoIt's four penises.
- gigatexal 8y agoSucks. Don’t like it.
- downer52 8y agoThanks, I hate it.
- fuckfascists 8y ago"squirt emoji"? I wish. More like swastika
- crsv 8y agoI think it stinks and prefer the old one.
- Corrado 8y agoSo, with that out of the way I wonder if they will be able to implement a "dark" theme now. I asked a couple of weeks ago if they had some new themes on their roadmap and they had a vague reply about putting it on the list. :fingers_crossed:
- soperj 8y agoIt really does look like a swastika.
- BartBoch 8y agoPeople complaining about performance since ever? Solution: Let's spend loads of money on a new logo!
- oth001 8y agoLet's see if the IPO earns them enough (to do another rebrand (back to the old logo shape)). Then maybe they'll think about the product.
- nealrs 8y agoIgnoring the actual shape/design - they went from 11 colors to 4 (+1 if you consider the text itself). This isn't much of an improvement because printing any swag/tshirts will require a full 4up press (or four spots, depending on how they choose inks) - which is still quite expensive. The old ChallengePost logo used 4+ colors, which meant every shirt we printed came at a $2-5 premium over a single color. When we rebranded to Devpost, we came up with a 2 color design (so we could do spot colors), which was an improvement - but I still wish we had gotten down to 1 color.
- blotter_paper 8y ago>11 colors to 4 (+1 if you consider the text itself) I was confused by this claim in TFA. I see 4 colors of lines in the old logo, plus 4 colors where the lines overlap. 4 + 4 = 8, obviously. Even if we counted text and background (which doesn't seem commonplace when discussing how many colors a logo has) that only brings us to 10. I get why 4 colors is preferable to 8, but I don't know where the number 11 is coming from. Anybody know what I'm missing here?
- pcmaffey 8y agoPossibly the required white bg?
- sleepybrett 8y agoWhy is four colors preferable? I mean yeah in 1980 that means 9 runs through the press, today four at best... and who the fuck cares it's all screens today. Honestly the old logo is four colors visually, you brain is shortcutting the overlaps because it understands them.
- blotter_paper 8y agoIt's not all screens, a logo needs to work irl. The Pentagram post linked elsewhere on this story shows a couple mock-ups of irl advertising and product branding. Want T-shirts to give away at recruiting events? Your T-shirt supplier will charge more for more colors. Fewer colors also generally make a design easier to replicate freehand, and you want amateurs to be able to easily convey your logo. A special case may be made for the old intersections being easily reproducible in some mediums, but consider non-aerosol paints and things get messy. Aside from physical constraints, I think there is a general argument to be made for simplicity. If something is more complex, there should be a reason for it. Otherwise, toss out the complexity. What is the reason for having more colors? There are other ways to convey overlapping lines, and I would argue that some of them are less complex, though it would be a lengthy argument -- it isn't exactly obvious how the complexity of an additional shape can be measured against the complexity of an additional color, and you can ultimately just subjectively weight one of those factors heavier than other and come up with a different answer. But I think the general case for fewer colors being less complex is pretty sound. [Edit for grammar]
- blumomo 8y agoMicrosoft is red-green-blue-yellow Google is red-green-blue-yellow Now Slack is red-green-blue-yellow Who is next?
- nwni 8y agoHacker News
- thomasbachem 8y agoeBay?
- the_arun 8y agoI was about to say that, you beat me to it!
- fugazithehaxoar 8y agoMarketing veteran here. Just like Uber and Instagram, they messed up big. They took something iconic and replaced it with something forgettable. The first sentece after they show it tells the lie: "Firstly, it’s not change for the sake of change." Unfortunately, due to the nature of company politics, this kind of thing usually happens because a new CMO or other exec comes in and needs to "mark their territory". Marketing in tech right now is having a big problem with people rising to the leadership ranks that really don't understand the basic fundamentals of the craft.
- zapzupnz 8y agoIt's a shame, too, because the technical reasons they described were all completely sound — but are no reason for them to have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
- ninefoxgambit 8y agoI felt like the technical reasons were also sound. But yeah the old logo was better, so go figure :/
- stevewillows 8y agoIf I went in blind and saw the logo animation, I would have said it was something related to Google Home.
- sleepybrett 8y agoIf the colors were in different positions I would have thought it were a microsoft product. Honestly for a second I thought, "did microsoft buy slack and integrate it with teams"
- nikolay 8y agoNo, they did change it for the sake of change. The new logo is pretty ugly.
- 8y ago
- BlameKaneda 8y agoThe new logo makes it seem that Slack is a waterpark, rather than a tool for messaging and collaboration. Looking at the new logo again, I also think of sprinkles.
- golemiprague 8y agoHow is that "better" than the previous one? Can anyone with some expertise explains? As a programmer I couldn't care less
- azhenley 8y agoI really like their last logo. It was recognizable. If they really just wanted to change it, they could have just simplified the colors. Oh well, now they just look like every other generic company (it reminds me of bank logo but I can't remember which one).
- Dramatize 8y agoIt really looks like a 99 Designs special.
- empressplay 8y agoMeh (I tried to come up with a more insightful critique, but let's be honest...)
- combatentropy 8y agoMaybe if it was for a company named Splat . . . > We’ll not bore you with the design thinking With a logo like that, you had better at least link to it. Oh, you did. But the link's label was just "Pentagram," so I thought it was to the company's home page, not its specific story about this work. I understand their complaint about the complexity of color, though I disagree. I thought it was beautiful, maybe worth the complexity. Regardless, they seem not to know that the new logo is more complex, and therefore harder to be distinctive. They have traded complexity of color for complexity of shape. If you concentrate on the logo in outline, you can see that it has so many lines going so many different ways, all tightly packed, that the overall impression is a drop of rain after hitting the pavement. It's hard to make good logos. For people whose only job is to make logos, it might in fact be harder. They're tempted to overthink it. They go through 40 revisions. The first two or three are often the best. This was the case here too, based on Pentagram's development artifacts. After a while your secret reasons behind each jot and hook overwhelm your judgment. Maybe the best thing is to take a month off after you think you've got it, to get a fresh pair of eyes. All those fancy reasons you came up with to justify it fade away. Like, what are those raindrops around it? Oh, you say they're supposed to be speech bubbles. Well, they kind of look like speech bubbles now that you mention it. But not really, because speech bubbles are shaped differently when they contain actual speech. These look like drops. Scattered around the logo like that, it looks like what happens when you drop something.
- Insanity 8y agoIt looks like a google product now. If I could stop seeing you the swastika, it'd be better. The # at least was related to the channels and showed some relation to chat programs because of IRC channels. I'm sure they had their reason for this change, I'm just not sure if it was a good reason.
- ljm 8y agoYou have to squint to make it out, but there is a resemblance: https://i.imgur.com/mqEs2MQ.png https://i.imgur.com/mqEs2MQ.png I'm not sure if it's enough to call it a mistake though. (My mistake for not spotting the entire thread discussing this...)
- kc10 8y agoThe old logo looked like an extension of 23AndMe's logo and the new logo looks like a Google product logo with four ducks in a circle. I like the old logo better.
- yeukhon 8y agoI must be the only one but it resembles CNBC... http://wcontest.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/1529781727_;w=600;h=315 http://wcontest.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/1529781727_;w...
- dbg31415 8y ago* We Don’t Sell Saddles Here – Stewart Butterfield – Medium || https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c59524d650d https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c5952... > The answer to “Why?” is “because why the fuck else would you even want to be alive but to do things as well as you can?”. Now: let’s do this. They hired someone really fucking good at making ugly lower-case As.
- booleandilemma 8y agoBefore, Slack was associated with such a universal, recognizable symbol: #. The symbol was and is a part of their product as well. Now it’s just a multicolored blob. I feel like this would be equivalent to Starbucks dropping the mermaid. Then again I’m not a professional logo designer who gets paid hundreds of thousands dollars per “project”, so what do I know.
- partiallypro 8y ago>so what do I know. More than they do, apparently
- gamma-male 8y agoLove it! Surprised by the negative reactions. The original logo feels a bit cheap and not well thought while this one has more purpose.
- decebalus1 8y agoIs it just me or does it resemble a swastika?
- thanatos_dem 8y agoNope, that one is all you
- cygned 8y agoMy colleague’s first comment: they should have invested that into developing a dark mode. A pity that Slack’s still lacking such a seemingly easy to implement feature. However, I like the new logo!
- anotheryou 8y agohttps://github.com/caiceA/slack-black-theme https://github.com/caiceA/slack-black-theme works ok
- m45t3r 8y agoI liked the old logo since it represented one of the most iconic features of the Slack, that is channels. This new one seems really generic and I can't associate it with any of the killer features in Slack. Nonetheless, least props to Slack team to putting reasons on why the logo needed to change, instead of a generic "we wanted to go to new horizons with our product" or "the old logo was getting behind the new design trends" or something else.
- crazygringo 8y agoLook, I get that the four outer dots are probably supposed to look like speech bubbles. But they look like squirts. Emoji squirts. Which are associated with sexting. And squirting is kind of associated with sex in a lot of people's minds... I'm trying to keep an open mind. But the logo is four squirts around four lines of roughly phallic proportions and rounded ends. Seriously. This was literally the first thing I saw when I saw the logo. And judging from some of the other comments here, I'm clearly not the only one. Really suprised this got approved.
- kaffeemitsahne 8y agoAny line is a penis and any droplet shape is female ejaculation? Stretching it a bit, I think.
- zapzupnz 8y agoI don't think anybody was suggesting the droplets were female ejaculation. Male, more likely, since we're dealing with four big penises. And stretch though it may be, GP isn't alone in seeing this. Whether people continue to see the phalluses and associated droplets in everyday usage of Slack, that remains to be seen, but good design doesn't need time to run its course so that people stop noticing the bad bits. I recall when I designed a logo for the radio station at which I worked. The concept was a flat circle with a cutout of a set of headphones. Unfortunately, the headphone cutout was a bit too low on the side, so what was supposed to be the space in between the headphones wound up looking like a bloated penis. It can happen to anyone.
- coding123 8y agoWell I'm glad someone else said this too.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chasedehan 8y agoThe logo is whatever, what I don't like about it is that the desktop app is now the blueish color vs the old black.
- vanderZwan 8y agoAm I the only one who is kind of irrationally annoyed that they push an update of the app for a mere logo? They even mention in their update notes that nothing else about the app has changed. I know it's a raindrop in the ocean compared to all the HD movies being streamed, but 7 MiB times the total number of installations for what is probably less than 50KiB if properly optimized feels wasteful (7 MiB being the Android version, I don't know if this is the same on all mobile phones. Also, I'm probably being overly optimistic about that graphic being optimized)
- the_arun 8y agoI just liked the old logo based out of hash tag - naturally so close to messages. In fact, the logo was the brand for Slack.
- mondoshawan 8y agoAfter working with Pentagram in the past, I can't say I'm all that impressed. Most times they tend to completely lose the concept they were trying to go after, and this is no exception to the rule. The beauty of the original hash logo was that it harkened back to the tags and IRC channel names. You can't see the hash in the new logo, and frankly, it looks like a blasted swastika.
- OnlyRepliesToBS 8y agofocusing on the right thing
- Karupan 8y agoWhy do companies insist on rebranding every few years? Is it just to keep the in house design team busy? The old logo was memorable and has established Slack as a recognisable brand. Why change it when there is no shift in direction of the company or product?
- omouse 8y ago>Is it just to keep the in house design team busy? Yes, that's essentially it. Most projects are make-work to some extent when you're paying for people's time in monthly or yearly increments.
- helloayo 8y agoThey did all this but still no dark mode.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sxp62000 8y agoThe new logo makes them look like a boring, stuffy company that caters to enterprise clients. Of course they chose this branding, but maybe this is also what they deserve?
- achoice 8y agoReminds me of logo of The Swedish International Development Cooperation: https://www.sida.se/English/ https://www.sida.se/English/
- pier25 8y ago> Firstly, it’s not change for the sake of change. Are you sure about that chief?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]