The Best 5 Logo Redesigns of 2019

Apple music has undergone a major overhaul in terms of design since it first launched in 2015. Over the years I feel Apple Music has struggled to find it’s own unique brand identity that distances itself from iTunes. Today I feel as though they have. As a whole, I can confidently say that I like their branding and direction in which they are taking it. The colour scheme, layout, and generic look and feel now feels like more of an established music streaming service as a oppose to just another branch off product from apple. It has it’s own unique identity and is competing very well with the branding of their rival in the industry, Spotify.

A change you will notice from the two logos, is that they have now gone from using all caps in their typeface, to sentence case. I personally think the reason for this is simply that Spotify is doing the same thing, and they want to be on the same ‘design wavelength’ as them which is fair enough (I would like to know the actual reason for this) but that said I think that it looked better before in all caps it made a bolder statement and left a bigger impact, but maybe that wasn’t their intention.

Firefox, again like nearly every other brand, has had its fair share of logo changes. Its most recent logo I must say, is my favourite. Even though it is pretty much just a simplified version of what it used to be, it does an incredible job of keeping true to what the core design was. The foxtail. Ever since I first saw the Firefox logo was when I was a kid, the main visual imagery that stuck in mind was that fox’s tail and I think it was very clever of them to make this the focus of their new logo. Also, with regards to the gradient within it, that is a trend itself from recent years which I am a fan of. It really is a good way to make something more eye-catching and ‘popping’ without having to over complicate the shape and design of it. The typeface has stayed the same, but there was nothing wrong with it to begin with. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it!

Yahoo is undoubtedly a contender for the biggest logo design change of the year and a much-needed change at that. It had me confused for years why yahoo’s previous logo was so “Old fashioned” and still skeuomorphic (more realistic looking with shading, etc) in today’s standard of design. I understand that it was a very recognisable logo and was easily identifiable, but it looked very out of place compared to other competitors like google. The new logo supports a much bolder and cleaner font and is all in lower case, which to me gives a more friendly and personal feel to it. It is a lot easier on the eye and has a fresh/young appearance. It wouldn’t surprise me if they are trying targeting a new target audience with this logo. The shade of purple is now a touch lighter and more vibrant which also adds to that softer ‘friendly’ feel. Overall I really like the change and feel it’s been very well executed, but time will tell if it will excel the memorable identity that the older logo had – I think it will.

For me, the winner of the biggest logo design change of the year, hands down, goes to BT. The changes between the two are night and day. They have made a very bold decision to make their logo very simplistic, ditching all the colours that people associated with their logo, changing the typeface, the layout. Everything has changed, it’s a complete refresh, but yet, it works. For whatever reason, I still look at the logo and think “Yeah, that’s BT”. It’s very clever in the sense that it is completely different but actually somehow similar.

The core of the logo, the shapes that form the circle have been removed but the circle is still there, however now it is home to the clean, bold font that reads BT. It follows the modern-day simplistic code and will look great at any size. The colour is very welcoming and feels ‘homely’ but also premium, which is what you want when you are competing against other brands for the best broadband, television, etc. The logo has earned a lot of criticism because of how simple it is and how supposedly no thought has gone into it, insisting they could have gone so many other ways with it. But in the end they decided that this is the best reflection of their company, and I think it does it well.