Instagram has shocked us all with its first model refresh in a decade. That is a very long time to dwell with your individual handwriting. Its cursive wordmark has remained unchanged since 2016, whereas the whole lot beneath it – Tales, Reels, the feed – has been pulled aside in each course since.
The announcement was made yesterday afternoon, simply as we have been wrapping up the day. Instagram’s Head, Adam Mosseri, was behind the huge reveal, merely posting a picture of the brand new identification. In his caption, he defined it was time for a refresh. “Cleaner and extra fashionable, with references to the unique and the simplicity and craft that is all the time made it Instagram,” he writes.
It was humorous that the primary commenter wrote, “Right here for the feedback”, as that is precisely the place I instantly went, too. The design group will be brutal. I ought to know; I’ve supported it for nearly 20 years.
As he suggests, the brand new mark remains to be a script, nevertheless it feels extra fashionable. The loops are tightened, and the letters are nonetheless holding palms. The thrives now exist primarily on the ‘s’, ‘r ‘, and ‘g’. All the pieces else has been squared up.
Which is the attention-grabbing bit, as a result of Jasmine Probst, director of product design at Instagram, says the group went by a whole bunch of instructions earlier than coming again to the place it began. “Script displays individuality, so referencing that felt proper,” she says. “The brand new wordmark is bolder and less complicated, with touches of unexpectedness.”
However that is simply the emblem. The broader model system, revealed on Meta’s design weblog, brings an up to date Instagram Sans, plus two new typefaces: Instagram Pen (a handwriting face) and Instagram Mono. Movement, structure and the UI have all been refreshed, too, giving them extra room to breathe. And the well-known gradient stays – nonetheless core to the model, simply used with a lighter contact.
“The refreshed model system places our group’s creativity and self-expression entrance and centre,” says Might Hartono, director of brand name design at Meta. “It is designed to spark brave motion and provides folks the boldness to create and present up as themselves, freely and absolutely.”
One factor that hasn’t modified is the digicam glyph. The well-known app icon in your telephone’s house display screen is precisely the identical as yesterday. Though Instagram has been taking part in with it elsewhere. It did a stunning marketing campaign in June, permitting six artists to reimagine the glyph as different icons. Names included Zipeng Zhu (a Inventive Increase podcast favorite), Uzo Njoku, Haruko Hayakawa, Humberto Cruz, Pablo Rochat and Felipe Pantone.
The response, as you’d anticipate, has been passionate and combined. Mosseri’s posts on Instagram and Threads have obtained hundreds of replies, a great chunk of which level out that the brand new ‘r’ can learn as a ‘z’. Not surprisingly, ‘Instagzam’ was doing the rounds inside hours. Designers, in the meantime, are literally cut up down the center: some have been relieved to see the wobbly cursive tidied up, whereas others have been left unconvinced by a mark that is half script, half sans.
The wordmark is rolling out globally, with the remainder of the system arriving by 2026 and past. So there’s extra to come back. I’ll look ahead immensely to the response on LinkedIn.
