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New logo

slackhq.com

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Re: New logo

#171

Post by mstade »

SCdF wrote: post #17

More 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

A lot of those “logo explorations for the octothorpe” look like swastikas to me, including the final shape. Basic shape I suppose, easy to find in most any circular-comprised-of-geometric-shapes kind of design, but still imagery you’d probably like to avoid associating with your brand.

Still, I love these kinds of process breakdowns. Having been involved in writing a few of my own, I know there’s probably a lot of pretentious nonsense to fill in the blanks (i.e. designers mess around a lot when working) but still it’s a nice read, short as it is.

Re: New logo

#173

Post by jolmg »

Infernal wrote: post #155
eppsilon wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for those not familiar with IRC, the association of "#" with Twitter hashtags says "communication" too.

And 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.

> a shorthand way to indicate a topic

And I imagine it was also inspired by IRC channels.

Re: New logo

#174

Post by cygned »

My 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!

Re: New logo

#175

Post by m45t3r »

I 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.

Re: New logo

#176

Post by bobsil1 »

tir wrote: post #90
tvanantwerp wrote: post #47

This 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 M…

Agreed, the '#' had a long history of indicating a channel, like on IRC, and by extension text-based communication.

It was nice homage to what they were ripping off, I mean modernizing.

Re: New logo

#177

Post by crazygringo »

Look, 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.

Re: New logo

#178

Post by bobsil1 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #136
toomanybeersies wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there's swastikas hidden in all sorts of innocuous places. It's such a basic shape (which is why it was historically popular) that it's hard to avoid accidentally incorporating one somewhere. Anything with rotational symmetry runs a high risk of somehow incorporating one.

> Anything with rotational symmetry runs a high risk of somehow incorporating one. Well, anything featuring right angles, four lobes, and rotational symmetry. Drop any one of those and the accidental swastika risk drops tremendously.

Love it. We paint red swastikas all over for Diwali.

Re: New logo

#180

Post by Scown »

giarc wrote: post #82
mythz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, they have a pretty impressive and aesthetically pleasing portfolio: https://www.pentagram.com/work/

Yet at the same time, some of the logos in the Slack work are really bad. 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."

Classic agency tactic, pitch two good ideas and eight bad ones... Client gets the illusion of choice and the agency gets creative control.
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