Instagram introduced a brand new icon and really nice black and white app redesign today. In the case of the icon, it's one case where the word "finally" is truly justified; Instagram spent years holding onto its iconic emblem and ignoring the modernized design guidelines of Android and iOS, where flatter and more colorful icons now rule the day.
There's a post over at Medium written by Ian Spalter, Instagram's head of design, explaining how the company arrived at the new icon. "Last year, a group of us started digging into how we could support this evolution while staying true to Instagram’s heritage and spirit," he writes. "We wanted to create a look that would represent the community’s full range of expression — past, present, and future." Spalter and his team recognized that it was time to move away from the old icon's skeumorphic style.
We started with the basics, removed ornamentation, and flattened the icon. And we arrived at a brighter, flatter option — but was it better? Would we feel the need to do this again in a year?
Since these early "flattening" explorations lacked the visual weight of the original, we turned our focus to figuring out exactly what people loved about the classic icon and how we could carry that over. Anecdotally, we knew that people loved the rainbow and the camera lens was a key visual element. As a part of our process, we also asked people at the company to draw the Instagram icon from memory in 5 seconds. Almost all of them drew the rainbow, lens, and viewfinder.
The whole thing is a fascinating read on changing something that's instantly recognizable to millions of people around the globe. That's some real pressure! And already, it seems like you'll either love or hate the new icon with not much room for a "meh" in between. It's colorful! But is it amateur Photoshop? Either way, if you scrub through Instagram's video on the new icon, you'll see some other mockups fly by. Some of them follow the app's change to black-and-white. Others encroach a little too closely on VSCO Cam territory. And then some of them are just bad.
But maybe there's one you would've preferred? It's not like it matters; the decision has been made — probably after some intense debate. I asked Spalter over Twitter whether these were all actually considered by the team, and he said that hundreds of possibilities were looked at. We're only seeing a "small sample."
My own personal favorite is probably this one:
Comments
By fakejobs on 05.11.16 11:20am
Damn, the internet is quick.
By inket on 05.11.16 11:21am
That was fast!
By mxmgodin on 05.11.16 11:25am
Wow.
By Chris Welch on 05.11.16 11:29am
Genious!!!!!!
By seofer12 on 05.11.16 11:36am
That’s the only word that came into my mind
By deuxani on 05.11.16 1:12pm
Way too accurate. I feel like Instagram is years late to the game with this gradient-laden logo. This is following Apple’s (imho – horrible) design aesthetic since iOS 7. That said, I do like the new simplified icon.
By chasen54 on 05.11.16 12:07pm
Fantastic.
By adamtyree on 05.11.16 12:57pm
EXACTLY!!!! Reminds me of Microsoft Power Point in the 90’s.xD
By Samuel Hauptmann van Dam on 05.11.16 4:05pm
hahaha epic video!
By Schroef on 05.12.16 12:54am
I hate that editing photos is now done on a white background.
By cameron.talley on 05.11.16 11:46am
I don’t get why they didn’t at least do something like this:
Add the gradient behind the glyph and maintain a connection with the former logo.
By GarageBlackbelt on 05.11.16 12:30pm
That’s still absolutely hideous.
By enemastone on 05.11.16 5:11pm
Because that’s even worse?
By BlackToe on 05.11.16 5:21pm
how about this?
made this on potato
By erickmojojojo on 05.12.16 5:18am
They need to stop doing their design based on Apple’s guidelines…
By emori on 05.11.16 12:59pm
Definitely an iOS first icon.
By oghowie on 05.11.16 1:02pm
I can’t wait to see it on android and be about half the size of the other icons.
By mzrdisi on 05.11.16 1:04pm
I hate how the icon for the Facebook app is half the size of the other apps, good thing I uninstalled that battery hog of an app a long time ago
By giorgiobob555 on 05.12.16 8:16am
Didn’t google force fix the icon size issue in Marshmallow?
By NdigoBoy on 05.14.16 4:29am
Spalter’s post is all fluff and no content whatsoever, as it doesn’t really go into why the aesthetic choices made for the icon reflect the brand identity. Yeah, the rainbows and the camera lens/viewfinder are associated with the brand, but you can render those in a myriad ways.
Yet, they chose to lift Apple’s aesthetic verbatim to use in the icon.
By AluKed on 05.11.16 1:25pm
So is this their way of telling us it actually could have been worse?
By bolawastaken on 05.11.16 1:32pm
A year… for a group of designers… to design that.
By redbeardedsf on 05.11.16 1:48pm
The new UI is really nice. Icon is hideous.
By MtlEvan on 05.11.16 2:08pm
I thought only 12 year olds who’ve discovered photoshop use gradients and rainbows.
By fueledbygin on 05.11.16 2:55pm