Another Win For Flat Design As Facebook Gives Its F Logo & Other Icons A Flatter, Cleaner Look

Facebook has given its main “f” logo icon a makeover, flattening the design by removing the pale blue bar along the bottom, which gave the icon a reflective sheen/slight 3D effect, as well as moving the position of the f so it now bleeds right off the bottom. The overall effect is a simplified, unfussy and clean looking design with the f more clearly leaping out. Facebook posted the new logo as a downloadable resource for journalists today.

The refresh was flagged to TechCrunch by designer Tom Waddington who notes in a blog about the change that it appears to be part of a wider icon spring clean at Facebook, with a whole host of other icons used on various official Facebook pages also getting made over in the same flattened and more visually striking style. These icons including a developers icon, privacy- and security-related icons and a mobile icon, among others. Updates seem to have occurred last week.

Here are some of the other icon redesigns — see Tom’s blog for all the examples he’s noticed:

Flat design has spread its levelling influence all over the tech industry and its interfaces in recent years — from Microsoft’s flat, tile-based Windows Phone UI, to Google’s penchant for streamrollering its product interfaces, to scores of other apps and websites. Standing out — or rather above — all this levelling is of course Apple, which continues to prefer a skeuomorphic style of icon and interface design that tries to recreate the look of real-world objects or shapes, by incorporating shading and/or texture.

Cupertino has been roundly mocked for sticking out while the rest of the digital world is shedding pixels and going flat (there’s a great dissection of both sides of the flat vs skeuo debate here) but from a usability point of view, flat design can create confusion about which portions of the website or interface are designed to be clicked on, for instance. However when it comes to something as visible as Facebook’s f logo there seems no reason to hold onto the pale blue bar. As a marketing message, the new icon is much louder and prouder, even though it’s flatter.

According to Facebook’s logos & trademarks guidelines page, the “f” logo can be used for:

1. Your Facebook Page
2. Your Facebook Group
3. An application you offer via Facebook Platform
4. Your implementation of Facebook Connect

It’s also clearly one of Facebook’s most visible bits of brand furniture — appearing on its favicon, for instance, and its mobile app icons. The new look logo is already  up and running on Facebook’s own Facebook page. While an inverted version of the logo (white square, blue f) appears on the Facebook search bar (if you have Graph search enabled). In his blog Waddington notes that the new f logo download is fully transparent, ie with the f fully cut out — which may explain the inverted search bar version.

The original f icon was designed by New York-based design house Cuban Council back in 2006 which told TechCrunch it has not worked with the logo or with Facebook since. ”Cuban Council produced the primary word mark for Sean and Mark in 2006,” Mike Buzzard wrote us in an email, “and have not worked with the logo or the company since.” His speculation is that the new icon system could be the the result of Facebook’s 2011 Sofa acquisition. Mike and some others from Cuban Council joined Google last year in an acqui-hire to work on Google+.

Facebook declined to comment when we asked about the icon redesign.

In addition to the general industry push towards flatter design, TechCrunch’s in-house Facebook stalker, Josh Constine, suggests the decluttered design could be a sign of internationalisation — i.e. to better communicate the Facebook brand to non-English language users who may have been confused by the horizontal line apparently connecting and extending the f symbol. He notes that the original design was conceived when Facebook was a domestic company targeting just U.S. users.

5 Reasons to Blow Up Your Current Website

Be honest: Is that Web design as attractive as it was five years ago? Here are key signs it might be time to rebuild.

I've received a decent number of compliments on my website over the years. To be sure, it's a pretty good one and it has served me well, but I've decided that it's time for a makeover. In this post, I'll list five conditions that almost always necessitate building a new site.

You acquire a new--and sexier--domain.

This one is a no-brainer. After years of trying I recently acquired www.philsimon.com. What better way to announce the new site than redesigning it? (As of this writing, the new site is under development.) Related to this, what if your company is launching a new product? In my case, both things are true. (My new book will be out in about a month.)

Your current site can only host so many pages.

Far too many people think of websites and content management systems as one in the same. They're not. Static websites resemble brochures; they aren't designed to enable users to easily add content. On the other hand, CMSs were conceived with nearly unlimited capacity for content of all types: videos, podcasts, and text. For many reasons, SEO favors sites with many pages over sites with very few. Think about it.

Your current site appears long in the tooth.

A theme or design from 2006 might look a bit dated now. After all, the Web has changed a great deal over that time. It's folly to assume that Web design has remained static. I wrote a few months ago that Pinterest has had a significant impact on design. If your site is image-challenged, it may be time to consider redesigning it.

Your current site isn't mobile-friendly.

Fellow Inc.com columnist Hollis Thomases writes that "Mobile now accounts for 12% of global Internet traffic, and it's scaling faster than the desktop did." It doesn't take a sorcerer to see what's coming. Yes, there are WordPress plug-ins that effectively simulate a mobile site. That's a bit like getting a little bit pregnant. Why not embrace mobile completely and get a responsive theme?

The performance of your current site is suffering.

My old site, www.philsimonsystems.com, held its own for more than three years. However, I just had too many images and plug-ins running in the background, most of which I felt I needed for different reasons.

Fast forward to 2013 and new development frameworks like Twitter Bootstrap obviate the need for a great deal of Band-Aid functionality. That is, these frameworks "ship" with many neat features baked in.

Simon Says

Websites age over time--some better than others. Think about how your site looks relative to your competition. Are you really putting your best foot forward?

How Much the World's Most Iconic Logos Cost Companies to Design Them

The price tag for some of the most iconic logos of all time varies drastically. While some of the most iconic brands in the world cost hundreds of millions of dollars to create, others got away with a check for just $15. Some spent nothing.

A good logo is crucial for a company's branding strategy.

While Pepsi recently redesigned its bottle, it decided to keep its logo, which it redesigned in 2008 for $1 million. (Signing Beyonce as a multi-year brand ambassador cost the company $50 million.)

Stock Logos—a site that offers, well, stock logos—has compiled a list that reveals how much Coca-Cola, Nike and other companies spent creating their logos.

But you'll be surprised which companies spent millions and which spent the cost of a movie ticket on their iconic images.

Microsoft: $0

Microsoft

 Google: $0

Although Google's famous, rainbow logo has gone through minor alterations over the years, the original design was created in 1998 by Google co-founder Sergey Brin on the free graphics program called GIMP. Then Ruth Kedar, a mutual friend of Brin and Larry Page from Stanford, got to work on other logo prototypes.

Coca-Cola: $0

 Coke's famous logo was created by its founder's partner and bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, in 1886. According to the soft drink's website, Robinson "suggested the name Coca‑Cola, thinking that ‘the two Cs would look well in advertising’. He wanted to create a unique logo to go with it, and experimented writing the company’s name in elaborate Spencerian script, a form of penmanship characteristic of the time."

The best things in life are free.

Twitter: $15

Twitter bought rights to the now-famous Twitter bird for $15 on iStockphoto. Artist Simon Oxley, a British citizen living in Japan, might have only received $6 for his work—without a credit. However, the bird has undergone a recent makeover.

Nike: $35

Nike co-founder Phil Knight purchased the famous swoosh logo from graphic design student Carolyn Davidson in 1971. Knight was teaching an accounting class at Portland State University, and he heard Davidson talking about not being able to afford oil paints in the halls. That's when he offered her $2/hour to do charts, graphs, and finally a logo.

"I don't love it, but maybe it will grow on me," Knight said, after doling out $35 for the swoosh.

Enron: $33,000

Paul Rand was paid $33,000 for creating the Enron logo in the 1990s. Rand also created logos for ABC, IBM, UPS, NeXT, and Westinghouse.

Pepsi: $1 million

Arnell Group redesigned Pepsi's logo to the tune of $1 million in 2008. According to Stock Logos, "The listed prices include a complete branding package unless otherwise noted."

A 27-page document, titled "Breathtaking," was full of pop-culture buzz words explaining Arnell's methodology for the redesign. The report was mocked using phrases like: "Emotive forces shape the gestalt of the brand identity."

BBC: $1.8 million 

The BBC made over its logo in 1997, switching from slanted fonts and splashes of color to the simple, letter boxes typed in Gill Sans.

Accenture: $100 million 

 

Accenture

The consultancy's change from "Arthur Andersen" to Accenture was one of the most expensive rebrandings of all time. 

The beauty of designing