Internet freaks out as Instagram introduces new logo
NEW YORK: Instagram changed its logo on Wednesday and, predictably, the internet was not entirely pleased. To put it bluntly: It freaked out.
The popular app ditched its old-timey camera icon — the one that actually looked like a camera — and replaced it with a square symbol that evoked a camera, rendered in the vivid colours and simple lines of the “flat design” aesthetic. It was sleek, minimalist and, according to many users, kind of basic.
The company said simplicity was the goal. In a blog post, it said the new logo reflected the app’s explosive growth in popularity over the past five years from a photo-sharing service to “a global community of interests” whose users share more than 80 million photos and videos each day.
“The simpler design puts more focus on your photos and videos without changing how you navigate the app,” the company said. “Our updated look reflects how vibrant and diverse your storytelling has become.”
But the people of the internet were not buying it. Memes were deployed.
The new logo’s colour scheme in particular — a neon rainbow whose colours fan out across the square-shaped camera icon — was criticised by users as resembling something that could have been designed in a Microsoft program from the 1990s. Others found it garish.
“The new Instagram logo looks like a rejected starburst flavour,” one Twitter user opined.
Another, BuzzFeed reporter Katherine Miller, wrote, “To be fair, new Instagram icon looks like something you press on a dreary day in an ad then Pitbull’s there and everyone’s drinking Dr Pepper.”
Fashion critic Vanessa Friedman said the change felt a bit desperate. It reminded her of rumours from the 2000 presidential campaign that feminist writer and campaign consultant Naomi Wolf had dressed Al Gore in earth tones “to make him seem more attractive and metrosexual.”
The old camera icon told you what Instagram was and what it did: It took pictures and had filters you could use to make the pictures look old-fashioned. But the new symbol throws skeuomorphism to the wind in favor of flat design, a trend in tech whose origins can be traced to Apple’s embrace of the concept in recent years, The New York Times’ veteran Instagram-watcher: technology reporter Farhad Manjoo said.
Instagram had been “the last holdout” against flat design, he said.
“Now all that’s gone,” Manjoo said. “All is lost. Instagram will never be the same again.”
Another Times technology reporter Mike Isaac was more sanguine.
“People become upset whenever there is a design change to a wildly popular service like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram,’’ he said, “but they get over their shock and keep using the service.
“This will all blow over, just like it always does with Facebook and Twitter,” Isaac said. “Instagram has hit critical mass. You may think neon is ugly, but I guarantee you’ll still be back using the app again tomorrow.”