Discord Rebranding | Hacker News Reader

Discord Rebranding

blog.discord.com

57 pointswhalesalad55 comments

There's something off (I guess you could call it discord) about the weights of the individual letters in the logo font. The c and the d come off as too heavy, and the r and i both look too thin.

I get the impression that someone has been matching the widths of elements, rather than using their eyes.

The heights are also all wonky in "scor"; they also look like they were designed to be metrically equal and not visually equal.

And the "i" might be especially weird for Turkish people.

Yeah, I agree. The new logo is fine and the logic behind it seems pretty solid. But the new font is... idk, it's just 'off'.

One might even say that it's... discordant? ;)

Extended typefaces in heavier weights have sort of become the norm for expressive brands nowadays. Take a look at Dropbox. The ink traps are exaggerated but it looks pretty balanced overall.

At first I was like "ok, who cares, why is it even on the front page".

Then I started reading the comments here. Boy, is the good old bikeshedding a strong force.

Everyone loves a good "complain about the new design" session. Spotify just had one (that went terribly) earlier this month. Surprised it didn't make it onto HN for us to all rabble about

Slack logo still sucks

There we go. I'll one up you with, the new GSuite logos are absolute trash!!!!

This is true, though "sucks" may be a little strong. I think that one seems especially bad because what they were starting at was already so good that almost anything was going to be worse. Pinwheel-squirting-multicolored-water-droplets might have been an OK logo if we hadn't gotten used to their remarkably-good original logo already.

I've seen nothing about the Spotify update, but it was so terrible that I've actually tried to start using Apple Music after being loyal to Spotify for 5+ years.

The update was so bad that it not only made everything users want several extra taps away in a way that nobody I've spoken to ever wanted (and screwed up a lot of prioritization and spacing), they even broke my recommendation algorithm! I started getting song recommendations for songs that were already on the playlist, repeatedly. I triple checked this - that there were no identical albums etc - because I was so astounded.

Link to Spotify rebrand?

It wasn't quite a rebrand, instead it was a unification of the mobile and desktop codebases which resulted in both UI's getting a redesign with features removed / usability regressions.

You can read the writings of a bunch of angry internet people here : https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/New-Your-Libra...

Thanks!

Edit: ... 13 pages of comments...

I told you they were angry!

I just had a look. A few weeks since I'd run Discord. If it wasn't for this story I wouldn't have noticed the change.

In what sense are you using "Bikeshedding?" If you mean that this redesign is a prime example of a company obsessing over things that don't matter, very true. But your comment seems to suggest you mean that people taking issue with the redesign are complaining for no good reason, which is silly. Any effort like this takes time and money, and has the potential to actually make the product WORSE if it fails. Thus, companies should have a good reason for making changes like this, rather than simply doing them on a whim.

An unhealthy obsession with graphic design, as evidenced in this article, seems to be a pretty reliable canary. As soon as a company starts preening its logos and fonts and UI, not for any tangible benefit but just so their graphics people have something to do, it's a solid bet they've gone from a place of innovation to a place of wasting time (and money). There are any number of actual problems with the software and platform that Discord could attempt to improve, but instead they're fixing something that in no way needed to be fixed.

This is even worse because it's software we're talking about: if "Discord" was a hip new soda there would be a valid argument for reworking the logo every few years to keep it fresh. Many people buy soda based just on what the can looks like. But literally no sane person cares what the logo or font of a piece of software looks like, as long as it's not so horribly bad as to be unprofessional or deeply unpleasant to look at.

Also, for what it's worth, the amount of corporate Memphis on that page is both horrifying and a little nauseating. Do companies not realize how utterly people have rejected that "style?"

You claim that this rebranding effort is not for any tangible benefit, but the article itself gives good reasons. It clearly isn't "reworking the logo every few years to keep it fresh" since the change is unnoticeable. But the new logo is better for low-quality printing and low-pixel displays.

As for the other aspects,

> When figuring out our new styles, we connected with over 26,000 members of the community to ask what Discord means to them. We got your feedback and direction on style, colors, and even the way we talk about Discord.

While I disagree with you, and think that this more colorful and expressive palette and font better conveys the kind of community Discord is targeting (for hobbies, for games, with a playground community vibe), perhaps the rebranding effort's engagement alone is worth it.

I like the logo icon but there's something about that custom font that makes the letters look like they don't align. They look likey they're wiggling.

Why? I see "welcoming", "fresh", "friendlier" but those have no real meaning here. The changes seem pretty arbitrary, and for the worse in the custom typeface.

The ads using this new language look cool, slightly departing from 'corporate memphis', but could it have been done without changing the logotype?

I know there's people who use Discord who are raising a stink about the new logo, but I quite like it. The old one had weird antennas that didn't match up and the new one kinda reminds me more of game controller than the old one did.

Agreed, I really like that the new logo is clearly recognizable and looks basically the same, while being cleaner at the same time.

I'm not fully convinced by the wordmark (might be a tad too playful) and the "blurple" (feels a bit weird on a dark background), but overall the changes make sense and don't remove/deny any positive attributes of the brand.

I like the new logo and colors, but man the weird thickness, spacing, and kerning of the font is off putting. The rhythm is all wrong so some of the letters look like they're the wrong sized or positioned wrong.

I'm disliking the new colour, looks like some disney channel hooli fake product.

The some of the changes to the UI are pretty annoying.

If you want to fix the reactions background, here is a bookmarklet:

    javascript:(function(){var a=document.createElement('style'),b;document.head.appendChild(a);b=a.sheet;b.insertRule('div[class^="reaction-"] {background: var(--background-modifier-selected) !important; border-radius:4px;}',0);})();

Or use Stylish/uBo to inject that css rule.

Why do companies use Medium for blogs?

I actually kinda wonder the same thing. It looks kinda tacky when Discord does it, and honestly the rest of Medium is so hard to use that it kinda strikes me as a little predatory. I guess that's the nature of the internet, though.

So I'm planning to start a blog for my project and decided I'm going to go with Medium.

The reasons are:

- allows custom domain, e.g. blog.site.com

- very little hassle to get up and running; created the account and set it all up including domain in maybe 10 minutes (most of that waiting for the cname to go through)

- mature product, easy to use, clean presentation

That said I was a bit thrown off by the UI for writing the article. It feels maybe a bit too minimalist?

What other options would you suggest?

I guess an independent SSG is your best bet. If you're just blogging, you should find something basic that supports markdown and stick with that. Having your readers nagged to subscribe to Medium is a bad look.

> Having your readers nagged to subscribe to Medium is a bad look.

totally agree, but conversely it can be good for SEO, which is a fourth reason I forgot to mention.

using medium automatically plugs you into their ecosystem which could be good for a new project (maybe not as much a mature one)

Ghost.

Ghost looks pretty good and that was my original choice, may revisit it before I start writing :D

because they don't treat a blog like an engineering project or building their own.

It's easier to use Medium / Wordpress rather than your own glue + ducktape Hugo/Jekyll/Static etc blog.

clyde looks good but that font is not what I would chosen

I agree, the font looks fairly childish. I assumed they'd be moving in the opposite direction if anything, given that their userbase is expanding beyond the original gaming audience

"I'm where the kids are" is the selling point of upstart social networks.

Yeah, it's weirdly elongated, as if they screwed up the aspect ratio.

(I'm past the edit window, but to be clear—I don't actually think they screwed up the aspect ratio! It just has that look to me.)

I really dislike the primary color ("new Blurple" or whatever). Too saturated for my taste.

The difference between their old color and their new color is exactly the same hue shift I've seen on broken screens in the past.

Every time I see their icon, I think my phone screen is done.

This seems way less faffy than most "here's our new logo/color scheme" posts. +1

I mean this in the nicest way possible, because I love discord and the engineers who work there. But, what in gods name are they doing with this wing-dings-ass font? It feels like each letter is from an entirely different font set

I agree. I think the font looks awful. It is almost painful to look at.

The rest I am mostly indifferent about which I think is usually the best I have to say about a rebranding.

It feels like they tried to do Dropbox style and failed

Legible whilst full of motion. It struck a chord with me (whilst looking like notes that don't stick together) Reading it I thought the logotype was genius whilst all the imagery of the logo fitting circles: nice but yeah, whatever... seen it before... it's like running a linter on some vector shapes.

I like the style of the font, it's super evocative. What I don't like is how hard it is to read (kerning way too tight) when used anywhere other than the logotype. It's not illegible, but I definitely need to concentrate.

I really like it for the same reason you hate it.

First, it is called "Discord", the opposite of harmony, and the font reflects that. Together with the round shapes, it also looks playful, fitting when gamers are the main target. At the same time, it is still a readable font, with just the right amount of quirkiness not to look like just another corporate logo.

I don't actually hate it, outside of this thread (which is really only here for us all to complain/talk about it) I am totally ambivalent. It definitely has that kind of DOTCOM-era playfulness to it, you're right

I first noticed this "style" in the rebranding of dropbox. The "language" of the font shapes etc. looks like they get inspiration from a single source. Anyone knows what it is? Is this the "next" thing?

This is the previous thing already. https://qz.com/quartzy/1728767/why-editorial-illustrations-l...

I think the 'next' trend is a step back into 3D, now with attainable soft/diffused light, kind of a playdough look: https://dribbble.com/search/3d%20design

Thank you, I guess I was talking more about the bold typography that feels like it is making the same statement:

https://imgur.com/a/4kETCXx

https://imgur.com/a/sIZjjIj

It's always interesting to learn when a logo or font needs to change because certain shapes don't print well, as the limitations of print sometimes feel anachronistic with modern tech, so I appreciated that they explained the reasoning.

Nicely done y'all!

Am I the last one to realise the Discord logo is supposed to look like a console controller?

I love that they didn't kill the previous logo. Just cleaned it up a bit, but it's still the same as it's quite recognizable. Font is a mess, but they'll likely change it soon as nearly no one likes it.

The asymmetry in the old logo ... was it just the bubble or was Clyde asymmetric too?

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