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Designing the Facebook Company Brand

facebook.design

71–80 of 238 posts

Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand

#72

The "A" and the "K" are fascinating. Almost imperceptibly bent, they round and soften what would otherwise be quite an authoritative logo. The "B" also has a belly. The whole thing is definitely meant to look a little friendly and approachable.

> The "A" and the "K" are fascinating. Almost imperceptibly bent...The "B" also has a belly. What's interesting to me is why anyone would bother with tweaks like that. The logo looks like a generic san-serif block letter logo, and I only noticed those details after they were explicitly pointed out. Even after looking at it several times, the bent lines register as defects to me rather than as an aesthetic design choi…

Just because you don't think to yourself "oh, the A is bent and the B has a belly" doesn't mean you don't percieve it. The goal isn't to make you appreciate the typography, it's to make you think about the company in a certain way.

I didn't notice the A being bent outward until it was pointed out either, but i did notice a sense of informality and friendliness in the mark, and that comes from details like the A being bent.

Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand

#75
post #7

Although a post about updated branding may seem benign, this is, I believe, a response to critics who believe the company should be broken up. For example: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/opinion/facebook-antitrus... https://www.wired.com/story/tim-wu-explains-why-facebook-bro... https://www.cnet.com/news/can-facebook-be-broken-up-what-you... Facebook is hoping that by differentiating its company brand from its fl…

Another likely explanation: Instagram now represents a very significant amount of the company's revenue and most of its future value. The new logo is designed to capture that, rather than reinforcing the association with its legacy business.

Agreed. This is clearly a pivot to a younger user base.

Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand

#76
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-trust laws are there for economic reasons, ie, monopolies preventing competition leaving society worse-off as a whole than can be gained from efficiencies of a single organization. It also typically requires proof of anti-competitive behaviour, beyond just being the biggest in the market. A lot of companies dominate their markets but don't engage in overt anti-competitive behaviour. I don't think they've ever be…

We've never had communications platforms so centralized, nor had comms companies with so much editorial control over peoples' exposure to information.

AT&T?

Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand

#77
post #57

> and the subtle softening of corners and diagonals adds a sense of optimism. [0] Oh come on. Has anyone ever looked at rounded corners in a font and thought "wow, that sure is optimistic!" I'm all about custom design and thoughtful branding but let's not get ridiculous about it. [0] https://facebook.design/companybrand

Not consciously, no. Subconsciously? Almost certainly.

    [citation needed]

Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand

#79
post #52

Is this top on hackernews due to astro-turfing?

I don't believe so. Most of the votes have been from long-established users.

Could you please read the site guidelines? They ask you not to post like this about astroturfing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Lots of explanation about why: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand

#80

Would’ve been better, IMHO; to pull an Alphabet and rename the company. This reminds me a little of the ‘Apple TV’ vs. ‘Apple TV’ article running around recently. If Facebook wants to differentiate their company from their service, a rename makes sense and also wouldn’t hurt their reputation when they create new products.

Facebook should split their engineering services into its own layer, similar to AWS. They can then sell social media services to fb, ig, wa, and any competitor willing to pay.

They could allow sites to white label the fb identity system, and offer their own isolated dir. They could sell anti-evil(spam/hacking)-as-a-service. They could sell localization. They could sell messaging infrastructure and image hosting.

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