Editor’s note

Good morning. Put on your French beret and open up Adobe Illustrator, because we’re talking all things design. In today’s special edition, we’ll get into brand redesigns that surprisingly worked, hilariously bad fonts, and a brief history of subway maps. We’ll also argue over quiet luxury and explain why all AI logos look like...that. Call your friend who went to RISD and let them know you’re auditing a course in Design Brew.

NOT TOO EXTREME A MAKEOVER

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Like showing your mom a new neck tattoo, unveiling a brand redesign risks ridicule and disownment. No one knows this better than Cracker Barrel, Jaguar, and Tropicana—all of which faced fierce backlash after changing their aesthetics in ways that customers construed as betrayal.

But some brands have been able to pull off a makeover that satisfies most people’s sensibilities. So, here are some brands that landed a glow-up and kept their designers off the industry blacklist.

The English Premier League focused on its mascot’s mane: The world’s most-watched national soccer league was able to update its image for the 2016–2017 season without getting booed by fans. It zoomed in on the head of the lion from its original full-body lion logo, creating a streamlined brand symbol that’s still recognizable. While there was some grumbling from fans, designers cheered the change.

Dunkin’ dropped the Donuts: In 2018, the Munchkins purveyor seamlessly removed “Donuts” from its name and branding to reflect that coffee had supplanted sugary treats coworkers are always foisting on you as its main product. Positive buzz among Dunkin’ customers grew in the days following the rebrand, according to a YouGov survey.

Rolls-Royce wooed youths and women: In 2020, the bougie automaker smoothly switched lanes to signal that it’s a lifestyle brand instead of just a luxury car company. It swapped the double-R logo for the winged woman that appears on the hood of its cars, known as the Spirit of Ecstasy, making the logo version of the figurine sleeker and more aerodynamic. One design critic praised the switch-up for successfully carrying “the company’s sense of luxury into the digital age.”

Reddit glowed up to grow up: Redditors, who are known for strong opinions on any new development, didn’t downvote the site’s makeover ahead of its 2024 IPO. The famed design agency Pentagram unified Reddit’s previously scattered aesthetic, which it had accumulated over years of its user-centric, DIY approach to running the site. The result was a sleeker 3D version of its alien mascot (named Snoo), a more mature-looking logo, and a custom font.

Even eBay decluttered: After successfully redesigning its logo in 2012, eBay made its website less busy in 2024. The company gave it a more contemporary feel by reducing product and sidebar text, and added more white space in a bid to court younger shoppers. Fast Company commended the new look for following the best layout design practices “without appearing too cold to middle America.”—SK

      

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CHARACTER FORMATION

Choose a font at your own peril

Ryan Gosling in the ‘Avatar’ sketch on ‘SNL’ that made the franchise change its font. NBC

As anyone who’s ever been served divorce papers typed out in Comic Sans can attest, font choice matters. Typefaces aren’t interchangeable, since they all have different connotations and levels of formality and readability. For example, calligraphy fonts may work for an upscale restaurant menu, but not for a “Bridge Closed” road sign. But some people had to learn the importance of fonts the hard way:

• Chanel rolled out an “I love Coco” campaign in 2016, but the typeface made it look like “I love cow.”
• Online retailer Belle Chic printed the phrase “My favorite color is glitter” on one of its tote bags in 2017, but the font choice made it look like “My favorite color is Hitler,” so they had to change it.
• The Calibri font helped take down Pakistan’s prime minister in 2017. Investigators said they found evidence that PM Nawaz Sharif’s daughter (and political heir) forged documents in a corruption case. The evidence: The documents allegedly from 2006 used Calibri, which wouldn’t have been publicly available yet, per the New York Times. Sharif later stepped down.
• The Avatar franchise changed its typeface after an SNL sketch starring Ryan Gosling poked fun at the film’s use of the font Papyrus.
• In 2024, the social media team for the Philadelphia 76ers gave us a perfect reminder of why it’s important to be anal about fonts.—BC

WE’RE ALL THINKING IT

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Something gastric, er, drastic, is perianally—sorry, perennially—happening with AI logos. Everybody’s been noticing that they all seem to resemble b*ttholes.

You can blame OpenAI and its hexagonal, donut-like emblem. When the company released ChatGPT in 2022, “It quietly set the standard for what ‘serious AI’ is supposed to look like. Circular. Abstract. Untouchable,” Lisa Smith, the global chief design officer of Uncommon Creative Studio, told Fast Company.

Other tech companies followed suit when branding their own large language models:

• By 2023, hexagons—the PG way to characterize some swirling AI logos—were 4.6 times more likely to be used in AI logos than in logos overall, according to Fast Company.
• But the most rectally reminiscent of them all is Anthropic’s asterisk-like logo for Claude, which bears a striking resemblance to Kurt Vonnegut’s infamous illustration of a sphincter in his book Breakfast of Champions.

Why do AI companies keep doing this? From a design perspective, circular imagery is associated with completeness, infinity, and approachability—all things that AI companies likely want to evoke for consumers who may be wary of the technology. Also, AI executives may be too nervous to break the mold now that concentric logos are as associated with AI as the colors red and yellow are with fast food.—ML

      

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EXPLAIN IT TO THE GROUPCHAT

How coffee shop aesthetic got homogenized

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Whether it’s a trendy café serving viral matcha lattes, a private-equity-funded coffee joint, or a humble local spot, coffee shops all over the world have adopted eerily similar aesthetics. The biggest driver of the modern café design, suggests columnist Kyle Chayka, is your algorithm.

Social media has allowed café owners to see what punny sign went viral for a shop on the other side of the world, or what industrial feature-turned-lamp kept popping up in their feeds. It’s not just Instagram and TikTok that reward owners for their sameness; Yelp, Foursquare, and Google Maps also prioritized similar-looking locations for visitors.

The result is a sleek, minimalist design with exposed brick or walls painted an inoffensive color. There are usually large wooden tables and plenty of natural light. The beverage options are usually spelled out on an overhead board with felt letters or chalk.

But the pacesetters are backpedaling. Starbucks spent years ripping out comfy chairs to streamline its locations for mobile orders, hinting to patrons that it didn’t want them to camp out and pretend to finish their screenplays. Then, last fall, the company reversed course, saying it would add plush charms, warm lighting, and more color to its stores to make them feel less sterile and more like Central Perk.—MM

history lesson

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A century-old design choice is why a glance at a subway map can tell you it’ll take three trains to get to the bar hangout. Modern metro maps are inspired by Underground drafter Harry Beck’s revolutionary 1930s London Tube map, which prioritized utility over geographic accuracy.

The metro map is not the metro

Beck realized that existing tube maps were more confusing than a Scottish Midlands accent, since they showed London’s geography in excessive detail—with a knot of twisting train lines overlaid on a jumble of city streets. He created a diagrammatic version that was less geographically accurate but represented Tube stops and line connections more intuitively:

• It featured only vertical, horizontal, or 45-degree-angle train lines, in bold contrasting colors, making them easier to navigate visually.
• Many city features, like street names that cluttered previous Tube maps, were removed to avoid distracting the viewer.
• The diagram ditched an accurate neighborhood scale in favor of zooming in on the busiest central areas with the most intersecting lines.

Cities worldwide continue to draw inspiration from Beck’s design to create metro maps that resemble electrical circuit diagrams.

For instance…New York’s recently revamped subway map boosts readability by featuring boldly colored, angular train lines on top of a simplistic depiction of the five boroughs.—SK

      

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debate club

Did quiet luxury quiet quit?

Quiet luxury, aka “stealth wealth,” dominated design and fashion post-pandemic. Understated elegance, neutral colors, and a lack of logos were all the rage. Some think it still is, while others believe the aesthetic is passé, with bright colors, logos, and gaudy displays of wealth back in style. But which, pray tell, is the truth?

The case against quiet luxury: After years of the extremely wealthy being lavishness-shamed into silence, the era of gold toasters and diamond-encrusted private jets is back. Business Insider says what’s in now is “gauche, garish, and over-the-top,” which is what I named my three children. Some call this “vice signaling,” a way to loudly show you’re a rebel by owning a nearly extinct pet leopard, but I call it opulence-maxxing.

The upcoming fall/winter fashion trends show that bold expression is in, and what’s bolder than a fur made from the aforementioned leopard? Even Gen Z, the group we’re told has no money, is getting more into luxury designers. What’s the point of actually being disgustingly rich if everyone doesn’t know it?—DL

The case for quiet luxury: There’s no shame in having money, but there should be shame in consistently dressing like Smaug’s lair—replete with enough gold, jewels, and silk to make a scene from The Crown look drab. There’s a time and place for extravagance, like the Kentucky Derby or your nephew’s pirate-themed birthday party. But if it’s a random Tuesday, there’s no need to walk around looking more over-the-top and logo’d than a novelty popcorn bucket (a different form of conspicuous consumption).

If you’ve got the money, buy some quality items that look and feel good. People will still be able to tell you’re rich by your shoes and lack of good bus stories. Quiet luxury is always in style, because good taste never dies.—BC

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ICYMI, use your Sunday morning to get caught up on some of our most-clicked recent recs:

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