Slack Has A New Logo And There Might Be Something Really Wrong With It

Slack revealed its new logo today, a redesigned version of its # logo. All good, except some people are finding there is something really wrong with the white space.

Launching a new logo is always a stressing moment for a brand. Are people going to like it? Does it represent our values? Will people understand it is still us? So oftentimes, just like Slack did, brands come up with over-detailed explanations as to what the thinking behind the rebranding was.

Slack calls the design “simpler” and brings a more artistic style to the aging grid (#) shaped logo. The colors(light blue, magenta, green and yellow) stay the same but the new design gets rid of the translucent overlaps.

Slack has a new “simpler” logo that is already raising serious questions among the designer community.

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The new logo is the work of New York firm Pentagram Design and “it uses a simpler color palette and, we believe, is more refined, but still contains the spirit of the original,” the company writes. “It’s an evolution, and one that can scale easily, and work better, in many more places.”

Visual research – Slack logo design

Great. Except that, like for all redesigns, some people are seeing something they don’t like about the new slack logo. Essentially, some Twitter users are raising questions around the negative space (white space):

The negative space in the new Slack logo makes it look like a whimsical swastika.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk about how the internet has ruined my brain forever. pic.twitter.com/6Mv1FiuJY4

— Eric Scott Johnson (@HeyHeyESJ) January 16, 2019

Slack.

Slack come on.

Making your logo a swastika is literally the easiest fucking thing to avoid in design.

How does no one catch this. pic.twitter.com/77MZlasDFJ

— Abomina-Sean (@Sean8UrSon) January 16, 2019

This obviously seems like an unintentional honest design mistake, but the negative space forms a shape reminiscent to an ancient symbol that later became the symbol of the worst people, ever (to quote TechCrunch).

Many designers are now sharing this point of view and explain that it could eventually cause the downfall of the new design. Can you see it?

#design #logo #slack