Designing the Facebook Company Brand

[jawns]

Although a post about updated branding may seem benign, this is, I believe, a response to critics who believe the company should be broken up.

For example:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/opinion/facebook-antitrus...

https://www.wired.com/story/tim-wu-explains-why-facebook-bro...

https://www.cnet.com/news/can-facebook-be-broken-up-what-you...

Facebook is hoping that by differentiating its company brand from its flagship application, it will address the argument that many consumers of the company's applications don't understand that those apps are all owned by one big parent company, and that if they did, they might consume/behave differently.

I don't think this branding really makes any difference, except giving them the ability to say, "Hey, we did SOMETHING."

But what I think we can say for sure is that this is not just a typical new branding announcement.

[dougweltman]

Another likely explanation: Instagram now represents a very significant amount of the company's revenue and most of its future value. The new logo is designed to capture that, rather than reinforcing the association with its legacy business.

[debaserab2]

The thing is, the differentiation that they tried to establish with the new branding is itself confusing. Using the same word just with different capitalization to specify between the company and the app is not going to help in any significant way since the two different logos can only be expressed differently in certain contexts. Which makes you wonder just how intentional that detail is.

[philwelch]

The traditional method of differentiating the parent company from its eponymous application would be to rebrand the company as "Facebook Group". For example: "Expedia Group", "Match Group", "Zillow Group".

[papln]

That's a real reach. People are talking about breaking up Google also, and Google already calls all its stuff Google, and that's no defense.

"People know we are one company" isn't a defense against monopoly power.

[MuffinFlavored]

Why is the government itching to break up tech companies? I feel like it's a bad idea for them to get involved at all.

[hos234]

Facebook has no imagination. That's the consistent message.

[oflannabhra]

I know it is easy to be cynical on these types of "announcements", but I am having a really, really hard time understanding how curved strokes (or any branding decision) can result in empathy or "open space for peoples stories".

Empathy is a human characteristic. To think that a word mark can have (or even create) it is patently ridiculous. In fact, I'd say it cheapens the meaning of the word to the point where true empathy means less.

This press release contains a type of language specific to our current time that will age like milk.

[lostgame]

Would’ve been better, IMHO; to pull an Alphabet and rename the company.

This reminds me a little of the ‘Apple TV’ vs. ‘Apple TV’ article running around recently.

If Facebook wants to differentiate their company from their service, a rename makes sense and also wouldn’t hurt their reputation when they create new products.

[voldacar]

> The brand comes to life in the context of people, cultures, communities and relationships.

What does this even mean? What kind of human could even write such a sentence?

[petepete]

Still got nothing on Pepsi

https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell...

[dcwca]

I'm as tired of marketing jargon as the next person, but what isn't clear about this? It's a simple statement, encouraging you to think of the brand and its relationship to people and culture, and all the different groups who use Facebook products.

[williamvds]

Most marketing material like this makes my head start spinning after only a minute or so. I can only imagine what extended periods of _thinking_ in marketing/PR-speak can do to someone

[jbattle]

The kind getting $600/hour to write sentences like that

[whytaka]

This is the reason I could not cut it as just a designer. The amount of bullshit required to survive in the design industry disturbed me morally.

[dakial1]

Basically that the brand should represent what Facebook is about. But in shiny, marketing oriented, words. I work as a consultant in Marketing and I still have a problem respecting creative people and their explanations. For me it's simple BS. But the reality is that they truly believe in it. We simply expect more science and less imagination from them.

[nuxi]

The synergetic, horizontally-scalable kind. /s

[nkkollaw]

It's all fluff mixed with virtue signalling.

As usual.

[avellable]

To think about it someone paid American college money to write meaningless stuff like this.

[notjustanymike]

The "A" and the "K" are fascinating. Almost imperceptibly bent, they round and soften what would otherwise be quite an authoritative logo. The "B" also has a belly. The whole thing is definitely meant to look a little friendly and approachable.

[CharlesColeman]

> The "A" and the "K" are fascinating. Almost imperceptibly bent...The "B" also has a belly.

What's interesting to me is why anyone would bother with tweaks like that. The logo looks like a generic san-serif block letter logo, and I only noticed those details after they were explicitly pointed out. Even after looking at it several times, the bent lines register as defects to me rather than as an aesthetic design choice.

Could there be some legal basis to those tweaks, like to make the logo trademarkable?

[Sommer]

Oddly seems to have been influenced by the Russian alphabet.

[bduerst]

Check out the difference between the new Facebook company and app logos: https://facebook.design/companybrand

One is going for authoritative, while the other is going for nonsensical.

I agree that it's strange to go for friendly-authoritative with the company logo since most conglomerates typically go for innocuous, but it may make more sense in the other app UIs.

[papln]

All I'm seeing is a monolithic in-your-face all-caps block font that screams BIG BROTHER.

Also it's a bit over-spaced and the letters swell outward as though it's puffed up to look extra imposing and dominating the space around itself.

[subpixel]

Not just that, it's pulsing in a way that connotes "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that".

[johnbatch]

This is probably a better link: https://facebook.design/companybrand

[psweber]

If you have the trailing slash on there, it takes you to the root domain. https://facebook.design/companybrand should work

[dang]

Ok, we've changed to that from https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/11/introducing-our-new-com.... Thanks!

[djstein]

much better article!

[namanyayg]

The logo is pretty bland (reminds me of Mark Zuckerburg, actually); but it's definitely a step in the right direction to label all products under the "Facebook" brand. Most people don't even know that Whatsapp and Instagram are all owned by Facebook.

[kgraves]

> ...People should know which companies make the products they use.

I agree with this. This is a good gesture of FB warning new and current users signing up/using the service with a screaming all caps logo, given the amount of spying, data mishaps and misinformation reputation they are slowly accruing over the years.

Other than that, this logo looks corporate enough that it should fit nicely with Facebook Workplace's logo.

[saagarjha]

I’m all for more explicit disclosure of Facebook’s involvement in Instagram and WhatsApp, but aesthetically…I’m not sure I like it. What was wrong with the original logo and the “Facebook blue”?

[wespiser_2018]

No doubt, this is truly great design work, kudos to that team! However, I can't help but feel my massive distrust for the company overshadow this work, and give me a very un-easy feeling about the true intentions of this entire thing. For me, the "transparency" I want to hear about does not come from a font, but from open sharing of advertising!

[shaneprrlt]

I'm not sure how well this will help differentiate the corporate entity with the Facebook service from a public perspective. Might have been more effective to rename the corporate entity like Alphabet did. Besides that, kind of boring and looks like it was thrown together in 5 minutes, lol.

[dmix]

The multi-coloured gradient example on the Instagram app seems a bit odd to me. Are they really going to change the colours of the company brand depending on the context of the product/brand it's being used with?

[liquidise]

I've believed for some time that part of instagram's continued success comes from the average consumer being completely unaware that it is associated with facebook in any way. This change risks facebook's controversies becoming instagram's when consumers realize they could boycott both/either.

[basch]

is there even a statistic on the number of people boycotting facebook? id imagine it to be infinitesimally small in the grand scheme of things. partially because there isnt a single alt-fb they are all gathered in.

[goatinaboat]

part of instagram's continued success comes from the average consumer being completely unaware that it is associated with facebook in any way

CNBC reported the other day that 71% of Americans are unaware.

[busterarm]

Their font choice reminds me of the Fyre Media logo.

[lone_haxx0r]

Those pictures of happy people remind me of the E Corp commercial from Mr. Robot[1].

[1] https://youtu.be/FZuOFdHKtF8?t=19

[eganist]

They added just enough of a curve to the 'A' and 'K' to irritate me, and not enough for it to be actively noticeable.

https://i.imgur.com/CmWWk2B.png

[d--b]

I am not a design person and I usually think that design people know what they’re doing. My opinion about design is usually as good as that of a 5-year-old looking at a Picasso.

But, am I the only one to think that this is not very good? Shortening the name to its equity ticker? What kind of message does that send to your users? But beyond that, it’s all caps in a font that’s really not original. Is that all?

This looks like it was made by a cheap automatic logo design app...

[michannne]

Great job! Hats off to them, I was only half expecting a see a sentence like "This truly captures the 'essence of Facebook', which we'll refer to as 'Mark' throughout the remainder on this document"

[ppf]

In my experience, the more time the word "clarity" is used, the less there is.