New brand

[huhtenberg]

New symbol in the logo is OK, but the text is a disaster.

Just stare at it for a second, especially the Re-d coupling. It's unkerned. The 'e' is about to topple over to the right, 'd' looks pregnant, 'a' is too top heavy. There's no visual balance, rhythm or consistency to how "Red Hat" looks. It basically looks as an amateur job.

http://videos.cdn.redhat.com/NEXT/new-brand/Logo-RedHat-A-Co...

[stronglikedan]

I think the redesign would make more sense if you were to draw a diagonal line from the bottom of the "e" through the top of the "a", and write the words "DNA" at the left end of the line and "FUTURE" at the right end.

[undecisive]

I'm not sure I'd go that far. It's clearly been tuned for the thumbnail version. I agree though, in that it doesn't scale up perfectly.

[lelf]

Amateur job or not, but… ok yes it’s a disaster.

[ken]

It's writing. It's two short words. You can still read it clearly.

I think fonts are pretty neat in a "hey we can make things that look fairly different but are still perfectly recognizable as the same concept" way, like the different styles of house icons which all meant "go home" in HyperCard stacks.

I confess don't understand the extreme nit-picking about one line being slightly too far over. Or trying to explain alleged issues through strained metaphors. Yes, this lower-case "d" looks like it has a belly -- that is the shape of that letter! They all do.

They've got an entire operating system, and it's full of bugs -- as they all are -- and it has obvious and measurable problems that hurt usability. I'm not sure why a minor branding change justifies a blog post on their part, and I really don't see why unkerned text is "a disaster". I'm typing this in a <textarea> which (like everyone's 1960's-emulating terminals and 1970's-styled editors) uses monospaced fonts, which by definition cannot be kerned.

[NullPrefix]

To me it just looks like you're making stuff up.

[Aardwolf]

So it's the hat but without the head? That's great actually, I wouldn't even have noticed it was new (in a good way, as in immediately recognized what it was), yet it's fresher and simpler, even manages to evoke a 3D shape feel at the top while being flat colored.

Good to see that new logos can also sometimes genuinely be a nice change!

[nailer]

The head is shadowman. I think shadowman was edgy, which doesn’t really fit Red Hat’s status as the solid and boring Linux company.

Also people will spell Red Hat properly now (two words)

[Cynddl]

Better article (despite taking 45s to load!): https://www.redhat.com/en/about/brand/new-brand

> We formed a task force to redesign it, bringing together people from different disciplines at Red Hat: graphic design, UX design, creative strategy, video, brand, product marketing, and more. And we worked with Paula Scher, a partner at design firm Pentagram, to help us focus. […] After 5 months of research, explorations, and brainstorming, the team found an elegant solution that still reflected Red Hat and could grow with us.

[lvh]

That website is extremely unhappy right now and is taking a full minute to load. I guess the cobbler's children have no shoes :-)

[makepanic]

The page is blocking while loading their new logo svg. If you block the request to `cms/managed-files/Logo-RedHat-A-Color-RGB.svg` it's working (apart from tons of tracking services)

[moron4hire]

Some giant white box pops up on mobile and blocks the content completely. WTF are they doing to their site?

[username223]

That's at least 7 internal people -- probably more -- plus a pricey contractor, for 5 months. I wonder how much that cost? Sure, Red Hat's 2018 revenue was $3 billion, and this probably "only" cost a few million, but does anyone else find this slightly absurd?

[natmaka]

> We formed a task force to redesign it, bringing together people from different disciplines

Pro bono or de Bono? Did these people express emotions and feelings and share fears, likes, dislikes, loves, and hates?

http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php

[bd727]

That site is a disaster to try and read on mobile at the moment. The page jumps every few seconds as peices load.

[sweden]

Some people might be interested in the reasoning behind the change:

- https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/open-brand-project-what-probl...

[elagost]

That's interesting. Glad that they mentioned that the old logo always felt "secretive and villainous" - it did to me, too, and struck me as strange why basically the most trusted Enterprise Linux system's logo looked shady and creepy like the incognito-mode guy in Chrome.

[dariusj18]

It's nice to see a company redesign their logo for all the right reasons.

[jimmychangas]

They were very open about the reasons, they are simple and make total sense. I like the new brand.

[aquaticsunset]

What’s almost as big as the logo is the change from Interstate to a brand new, open font. I love everything about this! I’ve always had a high regard for Red Hat’s branding and marketing.

[twic]

I hadn't seen that 1995 elongated top hat. Bring that back!

[forsaken]

Glad to see they kept the original essence and just seemingly updated it.

[darknoon]

The association with fedoras in popular culture is not positive at the moment.

Why did they pass up the opportunity to make it a more stylish kind of hat?

[ufo]

Replacing the classic fedora hat would probably result in mutiny.

[openbasic]

I'm sorry, but what's the current fedora association?

[copperx]

What would be more stylish? a red baseball cap?

[babo]

I miss the shadow from the hat. The new logo tries to be very PC, conforming in all possible ways. At the end, it's just boring.

[airstrike]

How is a new logo that depicts pretty much the same thing as the previous one "PC"? What does that even mean? Serious question

[slantyyz]

I get that any perspective of a logo is highly subjective, but can you provide an example or two that you consider to be not boring?

Red Hat is a mature company selling enterprise software, so I kind of expect their logo to be what it is.

[benatkin]

Looks more like a neckbeard fedora now. Probably did an analysis and found that winning points with the Mountain Dew and Doritos crowd was worth more than points lost for those who can’t stand them.

Edit: to put it another way, removing the face and putting in just the hat, puts more attention on the hat. And it looks more like it could be a trilby while the old hat was more of a classic fedora.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gevn4/i-bought-a-fedora-...

[uxp100]

I don't know if there is a way out of that for them. There are probably more people who associate being unfashionable and eating unhealthy snacks with using Linux than an old fashioned hat.

[asveikau]

Is the Mountain Dew and Doritos crowd still thriving? Maybe I have been sheltered living the last 10 years in west coast urban bubbles (with their various health conscious eating fads), but that phrase evokes a very dated, 1990s image to me. The successor would have to be a soy latte and a gluten free pastry, or something.

[lucideer]

I had always assumed the RedHat logo had always been a trilby, and that they were somewhat "stuck" with it for tradition/legacy reasons.

I now see that only one of their three previous logos (excluding wordmark changes) has been a trilby, which would seem to make migrating away from it easier. Given the modern 4chan association, I wonder has there been anyone internally at RH voicing such a suggestion.

Also... while the new one is definitely an improvement on the last, their pre-97 logos were great!

[ConfusedDog]

Not sure if it's my display or something, the black ribbon on the fedora appears jittered when resized for the top navigation bar on their website.

Overall, I think the color is a bit too bright for me. I liked the 1999 version... that's just my personal preference.

But it looks pretty good as favicon.

[agnokapathetic]

This is great, still recognizable, flexible and somewhat fresh.

Compare to Slack’s logo rebrand: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18923719

[sp332]

I don't have anything of substance to add, so I'll just point out that it's "homing in on" not "honing". Honing is what you do to a knife blade.

[cvs268]

> Honing is what you do to a knife blade.

...or to your skills.

[addicted]

I like it. Better than many logo redesigns we’ve seen lately, and a much better fit to modern tastes than the previous logo.

As an aside, I feel strangely nervous to say I actually liked something on the internet. (I mention that because I got the same feeling after the GoT episode this weekend, which I really enjoyed). It seems that actually liking something (which is not the same as saying it has no flaws) just does not seem to fit with the modern internet vibe.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

Woah, that's a really bright shade of red!

I like it, FWIW.

[goda90]

So long, dinosaur giving a thumbs up.

[nik736]

Please change the URL to the website. White logo on a white background doesn't make sense.

[timdorr]

They open sourced their new fonts: https://github.com/RedHatOfficial/RedHatFont

[jedieaston]

When it is distributed into other applications, do we have to call it Community ENTerprise Font?