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Refreshing Plaid's brand

blog.plaid.com

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Re: Refreshing Plaid's brand

#11

Post by TylerE »

faitswulff wrote: post #8

I saw an article about how a 21 year old brand logo (Lao Gan Ma 老干妈 chili sauce) became a fashion icon[0] for Chinese Fashion Week and wondered what the Western world would be like if companies didn't rebrand so often. The Lao Gan Ma logo certainly wouldn't have the same cachet if it was a 2 year old logo that looked nothing like the original[1]. Is it possible to make brands (or software) that's just "done?" [0]: ht…

Sure.

Consider, say, Coca-Cola.

The basic "dynamic ribbon" logo (https://www.coca-cola.co.uk/content/dam/journey/gb/en/hidden...) dates from 1886.

Re: Refreshing Plaid's brand

#12

Post by alehul »

pragone wrote: post #4
matchbok wrote: post #2

Why do sites continue to use the hamburger menu??? (and also hide the menu if we don't decide to allocate 1200px of real estate to basically empty website!?) Such a bad UX for discoverability. Here's what I see: https://imgur.com/a/COfKBYM

I'm confused - what's the problem with the hamburger menu? What would the alternative be on small screens?

Would have to search to find the exact studies, but it's been found that a hamburger menu will lower engagement and result in shorter user sessions (particularly, the user will visit less pages). The intuitive answer as to why is that you're burying a very important navigation menu by making it an extra click away (and hidden from view by default).

Anecdotal side note, but when I was working on a startup in some industry, we found that our largest competitor by an order of magnitude had a navigation bar at the bottom in their mobile app, while everyone else in the space used the hamburger menu. The experience made it seem like this is common knowledge at the higher levels of app design.

Even Apple has come out and explicitly spoken against the hamburger menu as a design element for iOS apps, and instead recommends tab bars.

Re: Refreshing Plaid's brand

#13

Post by runako »

mdorazio wrote: post #6
matchbok wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to trigger even on non-mobile devices. If I shrink my viewport to a normal width (900ish pixels) the entire site is basically unusable. :/

900px is not normal - that's tiny by today's standards. The only plausible alternative at a width that small would be to shrink the size of the text in the menu, otherwise it simply won't fit. Doing that would be worse to me for usability than switching to the hamburger.

> 900px is not normal - that's tiny by today's standards.

Wait what? That's tiny for a screen, but not for a (resizable!) browser window. Here's a shout-out for folks like me who run browser windows side-by-side.

Re: Refreshing Plaid's brand

#14

Post by baddox »

matchbok wrote: post #5
pragone wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused - what's the problem with the hamburger menu? What would the alternative be on small screens?

It seems to trigger even on non-mobile devices. If I shrink my viewport to a normal width (900ish pixels) the entire site is basically unusable. :/

Most modern responsive design doesn't specifically target mobile vs. non-mobile devices, but rather simply the width of the browser window. In my experience a width of 900px is generally considered pretty low for a desktop browser, and toward the high end for tablets and large smartphone.

Bootstrap, for instance, uses 992px as the low end of its "large" media query, which is intended for desktops.

Re: Refreshing Plaid's brand

#16

Post by liveoneggs »

pragone wrote: post #4
matchbok wrote: post #2

Why do sites continue to use the hamburger menu??? (and also hide the menu if we don't decide to allocate 1200px of real estate to basically empty website!?) Such a bad UX for discoverability. Here's what I see: https://imgur.com/a/COfKBYM

I'm confused - what's the problem with the hamburger menu? What would the alternative be on small screens?

since I don't use facebook I didn't know you were supposed to click on them until I started seeing articles about how bad they were. It opened a whole new world of menus.

Re: Refreshing Plaid's brand

#17

Post by oh_sigh »

faitswulff wrote: post #8

I saw an article about how a 21 year old brand logo (Lao Gan Ma 老干妈 chili sauce) became a fashion icon[0] for Chinese Fashion Week and wondered what the Western world would be like if companies didn't rebrand so often. The Lao Gan Ma logo certainly wouldn't have the same cachet if it was a 2 year old logo that looked nothing like the original[1]. Is it possible to make brands (or software) that's just "done?" [0]: ht…

Notably the brand is for a chili and condiment company. In that field, recalling nostalgia and your grandma's recipes makes sense. But no one wants to use their grandma's old software

Re: Refreshing Plaid's brand

#18

Post by culot »

matchbok wrote: post #2

Why do sites continue to use the hamburger menu??? (and also hide the menu if we don't decide to allocate 1200px of real estate to basically empty website!?) Such a bad UX for discoverability. Here's what I see: https://imgur.com/a/COfKBYM

I do know that is the default for many popular Wordpress themes. The hamburger break-point is usually too generous. It looks like its just a poor use of spacing that leads to premature hamburgerization:

https://i.imgur.com/kTid0y3.png

Re: Refreshing Plaid's brand

#19

Post by faitswulff »

oh_sigh wrote: post #17
faitswulff wrote: post #8

I saw an article about how a 21 year old brand logo (Lao Gan Ma 老干妈 chili sauce) became a fashion icon[0] for Chinese Fashion Week and wondered what the Western world would be like if companies didn't rebrand so often. The Lao Gan Ma logo certainly wouldn't have the same cachet if it was a 2 year old logo that looked nothing like the original[1]. Is it possible to make brands (or software) that's just "done?" [0]: ht…

Notably the brand is for a chili and condiment company. In that field, recalling nostalgia and your grandma's recipes makes sense. But no one wants to use their grandma's old software

> But no one wants to use their grandma's old software

Maybe that will change as the industry matures.

Re: Refreshing Plaid's brand

#20

Post by frereubu »

koube wrote: post #7
matchbok wrote: post #2

Why do sites continue to use the hamburger menu??? (and also hide the menu if we don't decide to allocate 1200px of real estate to basically empty website!?) Such a bad UX for discoverability. Here's what I see: https://imgur.com/a/COfKBYM

Don't know if it's just me, but the hamburger menu doesn't even work on chrome + macOS. I click it and nothing happens.

Same on macOS + Firefox
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