If you haven’t heard already, Nokia is dialing down on its position as a mobile phone manufacturer. To mark its pivot, the company has adopted a dramatic new logo, its first brand identity transformation in decades.
The Finnish tech firm says the fresh wordmark—an abstract emblem with negative space at the front, middle, and tail—represents a more “energized” and “dynamic” Nokia. The overhaul includes an expanded color palette that goes spectrums beyond the singular ‘Yale blue’.
Well, this “dynamic” look has energized the people too, somewhat. Consumers always have something to say when a company introduces a new logo, and Nokia’s revamp is no different.
A stream of jokes on social media insinuates that it’s a good thing Nokia has been around since 1865, because people would have a hard time deciphering its name had it been new.
DID YOU KNOW: the new Nokia logo pays tribute to its mobile phone heritage by stylizing the “N” into a trendline graph of Nokia’s market share in phones pic.twitter.com/M2uI3P9iG2
As mourning for the late Queen Elizabeth II has come to a close, King Charles III—the oldest person to take over the British throne—has chosen the monogram to represent his reign.
The new royal cipher features the initial ‘C’, for Charles, entwined with the letter ‘R’ for Rex, Latin for king. The Roman numeral III sits inside the latter, and the British Crown floats atop the visual identity.
It was designed by the College of Arms, made up of members of the Royal Household, and takes the place of Queen Elizabeth II’s longstanding ‘E II R’ symbol (‘R’ here denoting Regina, or queen). An alternative version in Scotland will replace the top with the Scottish Crown.
Charles himself has been the patron of numerous art and design efforts. Last year, as the Prince of Wales, he founded the Terra Carta design lab with former Apple design chief Jony Ive through London’s Royal College of Art (RCA). King Charles was appointed the Royal Patron of the National Gallery in London back in 2016, and he presented nearly 80 of his watercolor landscape paintings for the first time earlier this year.
King Charles III’s monogram first went into use in the Buckingham Palace post room on Tuesday, franking letters from the Royal Households for the first time. Following that, it will be decked across public buildings, uniforms, post boxes, and official stationery.
“The decision to replace [ciphers] will be at the discretion of individual [organizations], and the process will be gradual,” elaborates Buckingham Palace in a statement.
A new monarch means banknotes, coins, and stamps will have to be redesigned too.
Over the past several years, Figma has built its name as a forward-thinking and collaborative design platform and a formidable competitor to Adobe, the giant in the creative apps market. That rivalry ended on Thursday when Adobe announced that it has struck a $20 billion deal to acquire Figma.
The acquisition will allow Adobe to incorporate Figma’s popular design tools into its widely-used portfolio of creative apps. But the acquisition also means that Adobe will once again be taking a major competitor off the market and bringing it under its own umbrella, to the dismay of many designers who rely on the tool and are wary of another critical platform joining the company’s Creative Cloud service. And they have a point: with Figma off the market, the list of companies capable of challenging Adobe’s empire just got meaningfully smaller.
Adobe has a history of buying up some of the biggest tools in the creative space, acquiring companies like Frame.io, a video production collaboration tool, and Behance, which lets people showcase their creative work. (Belsky first joined Adobe through this acquisition.) The company has bought a lot of companies — even Photoshop was an acquisition. That makes the Figma purchase all the more concerning for designers; one of the few notable challengers to Adobe has been swept up, meaning Adobe will continue to consolidate creative app power in one location.
Fast food chains often operate differently in different countries: different menu items to fit local tastes, different names to fit local dialects, different promotions to appeal to a different audience. Last year, Wendy’s returned to the United Kingdom for the first time in over 20 years, and by last month, the burger chain opened their eighth British location in the hip London neighborhood of Camden. This time, however, Wendy wanted to make a lasting impression in an area known for music and fashion — and the resulting Emo Wendy has certainly captured the internet’s attention.
Originally part of a Camden street art mural — and now adorning the outside of the new Wendy’s — is a depiction of the chain’s iconic redhead but with what the brand calls a “flowing emo fringe” instead of her usual pigtails. The actual restaurant opened back on June 28, but photos of Emo Wendy have emerged as a social media meme in the last few days as more people have gotten a chance to snap pics of the restaurant’s exterior.
So what happened in Wendy’s life that made her switch her style? The whole thing is actually an advertising campaign. Back in June, Wendy’s teamed up with the ad agency VMLY&R and the artist platform Camden Open Air Gallery to design three new mascots that fit the Camden vibe. Three different looks were designed in total — punk, bouffant quiff, and emo — and Twitter followers were then asked to vote on which Wendy should be the face of the Camden location.
The new fast-food chain that will take over the 850 McDonald’s locations in Russia has debuted its new logo: two orange-yellow sticks representing french fries and an orange circle representing a hamburger against a green background.
On Thursday, the Sistema PBO company, which has managed the McDonald’s restaurant chain in Russia after the corporation left the country, confirmed to Russian state media agency TASS that it had selected a new logo.
McDonald’s, like nearly 1,000 other international companies, pulled out of Russia back in March during the first few weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. After more than three decades of operation in the country, the fast-food chain initially suspended the operation of all of its Russian locations on March 14, before announcing a full withdrawal just two days later.
“The green background of the logo symbolizes the quality of products and service that our guests are accustomed to. The logo will be used in the advertising campaign that we are launching today,” a Sistema PBO spokesperson said, adding that a new name for the replacement chain has not been finalized yet.
McDonald’s said in a statement on March 16: “The humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, and the precipitating unpredictable operating environment, have led McDonald’s to conclude that continued ownership of the business in Russia is no longer tenable, nor is it consistent with McDonald’s values.”
The multinational corporation went on to sell its business to Russian businessman Alexander Govor for an undisclosed sum, although McDonald’s announced it would write off its net investment in the market by up to $1.4 billion.
As part of the deal, Govor agreed to keep on all employees “under equivalent terms” for at least two years and “de-Arch” the chain’s Russian locations. Because McDonald’s continues to retain its trademark in Russia, the new chain is forbidden from using “the McDonald’s name, logo, branding, and menu.”
If you’re a fan of the classic Street Fighter games, chances are you didn’t like the vastly different logo that Capcom debuted for Street Fighter 6 back in February. Its departure from nostalgia wasn’t the only element that irked players, though. Many likened it to an $80 stock image that was readily available on Adobe Stock.
Sony has now released the latest trailer for the game, which is scheduled for launch next year on the PS5, PS4, PC, and Xbox Series X and S. In it, the video introduces a redesigned emblem that’s still hexagonal like its predecessor but is arguably an improvement because it falls into the background.
Whereas the previous version had the initials SF plastered on it, the new hexagon is shaped like the number six. It thus makes sense for the wordmark to take the foreground, reading “Street Fighter 6” in full.
Notably, the makeover sports an interesting detail that makes much more sense when animated. As Kotaku shares, the logo can be rotated to reveal the Roman numerals VI, a nod at the style of the brandings for the earlier games. It now reads ‘6’ upright and ‘VI’ on its side.
Just last week, Instagram users noticed that the app icon had randomly become a lot brighter. Well, now we know why – it’s all part of Instagram’s biggest rebrand in years. But it seems the internet is torn over the platform’s new look.
Meta-owned Instagram has revealed a new visual identity comprising of a brand new bespoke typeface, and the aforementioned brighter logo. Perhaps the most notable change is the new wordmark, now rendered in the ‘Instagram Sans’ typeface.
Instagram says the refresh is designed to help the platform “create more immersive and inclusive experiences.” In a blog post, the company breaks the rebrand down into three core areas:
The gradient is reimagined with “vibrant colours to make it feel illuminated and alive, and to signal moments of discovery”.
The new typeface, Instagram Sans, is “designed with Instagram’s heritage in mind and includes multiple global scripts.”
The new layout and design system is “content-forward and celebrates creativity, simplicity and self-expression.”
We’ve already seen the tweaked icon (designed by Rose Pilkington), which appears to be blinding some users. But now we’ve been given a much more comprehensive look at the new brand identity. ‘Instagram Sans‘ is a fun new typeface based around what Instagram “lovingly” calls the “squircle” – the rounded square of its logo. The typeface is also available to use in Stories and Reels.
But the most noticeable use of the typeface is in the brand new wordmark (above). Replacing the ‘handwritten’ style that’s been around for as long as Instagram, the new wordmark is a much more contemporary affair – and considering how long we’ve had to look at the last one, Daniel Piper’s a fan.
But over on that other social media platform, reactions are mixed. Yes, Twitter is, as Twitter does, making its feelings known about the new look, and the responses range from really loving it to really not loving it.
And responses to the new icon have been doing the rounds for a few days now. “I’m going to have to reduce my screen brightness for that,” one Twitter user complains, while another adds, “New Instagram icon is way over-saturated. Gross.” And lots have users have shared screen recordings of iOS seeming to struggle with the new icon – when closing the app, the icon appears to judder between the old and new design.
For the first time ever, Coca-Cola will be launching a unified, global advertising campaign for Sprite, with the new logo slated to be rolled out across all 200 markets, alongside its new brand identity ‘Heat Happens’ slogan.
The marketing initiative will first debut in the US and India this month, just in time for the summer, so you’re always reminded that when it gets too hot out, it’s time to crack open a refreshing can of the lemon and lime soft drink.
Sprite’s cans and bottles will don a more minimalist logo with upright typography, making it more legible. The surrounding starburst has also been burst.
Additionally, the brand has a new focus on sustainability and will be phasing out its iconic green bottles to be replaced with clear ones, which are reportedly easier to recycle. These bottles will also feature a “recycle me” reminder.
A nonprofit blockchain developer sued Meta Platforms Inc in California federal court Friday, alleging a new logo adopted by the company formerly known as Facebook will cause consumer confusion with its own infinity-symbol logo.
Switzerland-based Dfinity said being associated with Meta’s “sordid” history with user privacy could hurt the non-profit’s efforts to attract people to its blockchain platform, which it wants to use to “take on Big Tech and its growing control over user data.”
Dfinity was founded in 2016. Its Internet Computer is an “infinite” public blockchain network designed to host authenticated smart contracts. It registered a federal trademark for its infinity-symbol logo in 2018.
Meta, Dfinity, and Dfinity’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Facebook Inc rebranded as Meta last October to reflect its plans to focus on the virtual-reality “metaverse.” Meta has described its new logo as a “continuous loop” that resembles both the letter ‘M’ and an infinity sign, “symbolizing infinite horizons in the metaverse.”
Dfinity’s lawsuit said Meta’s logo is confusingly similar to its logo. It also said that a Meta executive outlined plans to adopt blockchain technologies in an internal memo, which would add to the likelihood of confusion between the companies.
Dfinity asked the court to stop Meta from using the logo and for an unspecified amount of money damages.
The case is Dfinity Foundation v. Meta Platforms Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:22-cv-02632.
The Warner Bros. logo has always been more irreverent than the marks of other major media brands. Think of Bugs Bunny, one hand leaning against the edge of the shield, the other holding a half-eaten carrot. Or similarly posed Michigan J. Frog, the top-hatted mascot of defunct teen television channel the WB.
Unlike say Disney, which is undeniably a family brand, Warner Bros. has always had many audiences and identities. It has more flex. And now, after WarnerMedia’s freshly sealed merger with Discovery, the newly formed Warner Bros. Discovery brand is drawing on that storied, multifaceted visual identity from the past to launch itself into the future.
“We think of Warner Bros. as legendary, iconic, historic,” says Sagi Haviv, partner and designer at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, whose firm started working on branding the as-yet-unformed media giant in early October. On April 8, AT&T formally handed over WarnerMedia’s assets to Discovery, creating Warner Bros. Discovery in a massive $43 billion merger. The company combines WarnerMedia’s assets (a 99-year-old movie studio, as well as television brands like CNN and HBO) with Discovery’s (including HGTV, Food Network, and TLC). And the new logo pairs the company’s lengthy new name with a sharp, flat design take on the classic WB shield.
The new logo follows a leaked mock-up logo from an internal presentation that was widely ridiculed online in June. That logo, one part Superman, one part WordArt, with a dash of movie magic, was a visual representation to accompany the announcement of the proposed merger, not a bona fide mark. (The tagline “The stuff that dreams are made of” is the last line delivered by Humphrey Bogart’s character in the 1941 noir The Maltese Falcon.) Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv was not involved with it.
One can, perhaps, forgive Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, formerly head of Discovery, for leaning into that cinematic urge. After all, AT&T bought Warner Bros. in 2018 as part of the Texas-based telecom’s acquisition of parent company TimeWarner, then “slashed and burned through the Warner Bros. ranks and . . . pushed Warner to start behaving as more of a technology company and less of an entertainment one,” as The New York Times reported. The logo got a similar treatment: It was stripped of its iconic gold color and dipped in AT&T’s blue and white.
As Warner Bros. Discovery, the company is embracing its entertainment roots once again and has the logo to match. The shield is back in its full blue-and-gold glory.
Warner Bros. Discovery could have gone with a more abstract visual identity to appear consistent with competing media giants like Amazon and Netflix (not to mention Disney, whose logo has been simplified dramatically over the years). But this new mark isn’t meant to make Warner Bros. Discovery fit in.
“What is a logo meant to do? It’s meant to set you apart, differentiate you. You don’t want to be like others, so that’s one thing,” Haviv says. “The other thing is, they are not like those others. They are storytellers, and the Warner Brothers brand really stands for that and that is why this was selected to be the banner.”
In other words, by embracing—even flaunting—its legacy as an entertainment company above all else, Warner Bros. Discovery hopes that it will be able to better compete against other media brands in the streaming world and beyond. The shield has played before hundreds of iconic movies and TV shows of the past century. It reminds audiences that the company’s library includes not just breadth of content, but depth.
Still, Haviv says that strategy-wise, the design team was careful “not to capture nostalgia alone.” The inspiration for this new logo comes from the 1948 WB shield—a gold, three-dimensional shape that first appeared (in black and white) in the opening credits of Key Largo, another Bogart-starring noir classic. It could easily look antiquated.
So the designers took pains to nudge the overall look in a modern direction. Creating more symmetry between the letters was one such tweak. Without the ribbon of text across the middle traditionally usually used in the shield, the size difference between W and B is more obvious. Filling that space made it look more like a cohesive interpretation rather than a direct translation. But a W is wide and a B is more of a standard width, so giving them equal space inside the shape involved redrawing the swoop of the B to fill the gap in the upper right corner.
The second challenge was equalizing the weight of the border with the weight of the letters so that everything appears as a single unit. That harmony, Haviv says, is what makes it feel “more contemporary, more of today and tomorrow.” One can imagine a form like that easily scaling down to a favicon while still looking at home on a movie poster.
It takes a lot of time, money, and exposure to build meaning into a logo, Haviv says, but the Warner Bros. shield already comes with that time-worn weight. So while the idea of borrowing a symbol from the past for a future-oriented company may seem counterintuitive, the choice was deliberate, and the execution nuanced. The shield is proportioned to be small, Haviv says, “like a jewel,” compared to the main story, which “is more the word, the name.”
Despite the complexity that comes from creating a visual identity in the middle of a major corporate merger, Haviv says that the leadership at Warner Bros, Discovery, especially Zaslav, had a lot of vision. Creativity, storytelling, longevity . . . “all of these qualities are built already into that shield,” Haviv says, “and you can’t buy that.”
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