I’ve always associated all caps with shouting. Not sure how an all caps logo with a few softening tweaks sends a message of empathy.
Designing the Facebook Company Brand
211–220 of 238 posts
Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a defense, but the fact that many incorrectly think of them as separate entities can be an aggravating factor. Just because Google doesn't have that specific aggravating factor and there is still a question of whether they have monopoly power, doesn't mean that said aggravating factor doesn't count for something.
But antitrust remedies are all about single companies, aren't they?
They will deem it a single entity.
Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand
#213This again? All this over adjusting the font on your logo? How many people in SV are getting six figures to blather novels over using the Bezier tool in Illustrator on a few graphics? Are there really people paid for this? Wow, guess everyone else can feel better about how much they pretend to work.
Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand
#214> The brand comes to life in the context of people, cultures, communities and relationships. What does this even mean? What kind of human could even write such a sentence?
To think about it someone paid American college money to write meaningless stuff like this.
Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you please not unsubstantive comments here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You're right. The comment was just mean and didn't give any value to the readers. I apologize, my bad. Is there anything i can do now to delete it?
Ok, we've deleted it for you.
Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
The United States Postal Service? Although it's illegal for them to open mail without a specific warrant.
The USPS is my go-to example of why “Net Neutrality” is a requirement for communication.
The USPS mail service is frankly bullshit. It exists to spam the hell out of you.
Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So creating a new super company name, like Alphabet, which sounds a lot like Altria (phillip morris) to me, that isn't directly tied to the other companies would have been a sensible direction. Kinda off-topic, but I feel like such corporate renamings should be illegal, or at least heavily scrutinized and subject to regulatory approval. Brands are socially useful to help track both positive and negative perceptions…
People can change their names to avoid reputational consequences, and corporations are currently considered as such. Renaming a company also seems like a large hassle that is likely to get more press and attention, not less. I'm not sure this is a legitimate fear.
I think if you ask 100 people what Altria is vs Philip Morris, most know and have negative associations w the latter.
Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand
#218I know it is easy to be cynical on these types of "announcements", but I am having a really, really hard time understanding how curved strokes (or any branding decision) can result in empathy or "open space for peoples stories". Empathy is a human characteristic. To think that a word mark can have (or even create ) it is patently ridiculous. In fact, I'd say it cheapens the meaning of the word to the point where true…
> I know it is easy to be cynical on these types of "announcements", but I am having a really, really hard time understanding how curved strokes (or any branding decision) can result in empathy or "open space for peoples stories".
They don't "result" in empathy, but the design is meant to reinforce that.
In our inherited tradition of typography, the modernist era inspired so-called geometric letterforms based on very few basic shapes, and while those letterforms were very distinctive, clear, and straightforward, they lacked the familiar structure, that "human" and "organic" feel that comes out of handwritten letterforms.
This brand chosen for facebook is, at its core, geometric; it reinforces and puts center the notion of clarity that it intends to communicate. This clarity and simplicity is actually quite practically demonstrable: you see that the branding team demonstrates it in various shades superimposed on all kinds on stock branding photos and video, and yet it is recognizable and easily identifiable. Not all marks of companies can be used in this way; some are so inflexible that they can only be displayed in one palette in fixed Pantone colors before a white background.
Nonetheless, as they are proud to state, the mark deviates from the geometric paradigm in a subtle yet clear way in the curved strokes of the A and K. It is not so overdone that it obscures the inherent clarity and simplicity of the geometric paradigm, but clearly present to show a conscious acknowledgement and recognition.
Ironically, in the branding videos with the FB mark superimposed, the extreme versatility and yet extreme distinctiveness of the FB mark highlights a very FB-ish behavior. They want to, and want to be able to fit into all kinds of social space that you have, and to do so without losing its distinct FB identity, so that you are aware of its presence in all kinds of social activity that you experience.
To a large extent, it has accomplished that (e.g. use of FB and IG in marketing and organizing events).
Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand
#219They should have also renamed the parent company to Face, Inc.
Re: Designing the Facebook Company Brand
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
like myself and most people on this site, you're probably a hyper-rational engineering type. I think you're both engaging in and are affected by mythologizing and branding right in your comment so perhaps neither you nor the people you're referring to are as 'hyper-rational' as you imagine. I doubt anyone is particularly emotionally engaged by Slack's inoffensive hipster-corporatist design language and for a work too…
I think you are right! The whole identity of thinking of yourself as "engineering type" is likely fulfilling some emotional need to belong to a group you perceive as superior. However, I'm also certain the hipster-corporatist brand aesthetic of products like Slack is exactly part of the appeal. It definitely signals that slack is a tool used by a certain "tribe." And if you aspire to be in that tribe, this tool is fo…
And if you aspire to be in that tribe, this tool is for you
Slack's branding certainly has a purpose but I think it's more about broad acceptance than individual aspirations - it has to look like something people use at work. There's a whiff of 'tech' and even playfulness to it but it's sensibly calibrated to be business-anodyne. There is also an element of edginess but it's neatly and entirely contained in the name. By this point, though, 'Slack' has almost become a generic term for 'work chat' so there's little danger anyone with purchasing authority is going to confuse it with one of the foundational concepts of the Church of the SubGenius™.
Slack's branding is more akin to the logo you see on the side of the floor buffing machine building maintenance workers guide around the office at night. That's not there to inspire anyone to join the hardworking tribe of building maintenance workers.