The New Look for Instagram

If you haven’t seen it yet, Insta­gram intro­duced their new look. And the com­mu­ni­ty is already shar­ing their opin­ions about the logo. The truth is, peo­ple don’t always respond well to change. Espe­cial­ly when they feel con­nect­ed to a cer­tain brand.

We’ve seen this hap­pen to oth­er large brands, such as Gap, Pep­si, The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and Uber. Just to name a few. In these instances, the com­mu­ni­ty (includ­ing design­ers) open­ly shared via social media their dis­like for the changes. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, peo­ple will not read about the process that influ­enced these rebrands. Some­times, it’s the way the infor­ma­tion is pre­sent­ed that cre­ates a dis­con­nect to the loy­al fans. Insta­gram cer­tain­ly knew that. So they announced their new look with a clever video that showed the process behind the evo­lu­tion. You almost felt part of the plan­ning, in a way. Take a look at their video below.

The new look for Instagram

Sev­er­al peo­ple are com­ment­ing that the new Insta­gram logo is so sim­ple, or there are too many col­ors. Some even express nos­tal­gia over the old look. While the design may seem sim­ple, it has so much depth. As design­ers, we are taught to avoid using gra­di­ents (espe­cial­ly for logos) BUT Insta­gram was very clever. They took a risk and it actu­al­ly works. The use of the gra­di­ent back­ground seems to tie a mean­ing­ful con­nec­tion to the vari­ety of con­tent peo­ple share on Insta­gram. Col­or is a deep form of expres­sion for brands. And some brands, don’t har­ness that form of expres­sion at all. But not Insta­gram. By using a gra­di­ent as the back­ground, it feels more inclu­sive to the vari­ety of con­tent shared on Insta­gram. If you don’t feel see the con­nec­tion, watch the video again. See how they pre­sent­ed the new col­ors and how they even­tu­al­ly formed a whole new spec­trum of colors.

Their new design was also imple­ment­ed on the actu­al interface—even the icons were sim­pli­fied. This meant that there would be more focus on the actu­al con­tent peo­ple post, not the icons. And if you ask us, that is cer­tain­ly putting the user first.

Brands can take risks when they unveil a new look. But before you jump to con­clu­sions, see if you can learn about the process behind it. You may change your mind about it. Plus it makes for a great con­ver­sa­tion with fel­low peers.

Oh and while we are talk­ing about Insta­gram, don’t for­get to fol­low us @NicteCreativeDesign.