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.

About the Author

Nicte Cuevas, Principal of Nicte Creative Design, empowers mission-driven businesses through strategic design & branding. Nicte has applied this when working with Adobe Spark and Twitter Business, LinkedIn Learning, Dogs on Deployment and Purina, Girl Scouts, The Houston Zoo and The Contemporary Arts Museum. Her excellence in communication design & marketing has been recognized by multiple national / international awards, including a coveted feature in Graphic Design USA's People to Watch.

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