
New brand - rwmj
https://www.redhat.com/en/about/brand/new-brand
======
huhtenberg
New symbol in the logo is OK, but the text is a disaster.

Just stare at it for a second, especially the Re-d coupling. It's unkerned.
The 'e' is about to topple over to the right, 'd' looks pregnant, 'a' is too
top heavy. There's no visual balance, rhythm or consistency to how "Red Hat"
looks. It basically looks as an amateur job.

[http://videos.cdn.redhat.com/NEXT/new-brand/Logo-RedHat-A-
Co...](http://videos.cdn.redhat.com/NEXT/new-brand/Logo-RedHat-A-Color-
RGB.svg)

~~~
ken
It's writing. It's two short words. You can still read it clearly.

I think fonts are pretty neat in a "hey we can make things that look fairly
different but are still perfectly recognizable as the same concept" way, like
the different styles of house icons which all meant "go home" in HyperCard
stacks.

I confess don't understand the extreme nit-picking about one line being
slightly too far over. Or trying to explain alleged issues through strained
metaphors. Yes, this lower-case "d" looks like it has a belly -- that is the
shape of that letter! They all do.

They've got an entire operating system, and it's full of bugs -- as they all
are -- and it has obvious and _measurable_ problems that hurt usability. I'm
not sure why a minor branding change justifies a blog post on their part, and
I _really_ don't see why unkerned text is "a disaster". I'm typing this in a
<textarea> which (like everyone's 1960's-emulating terminals and 1970's-styled
editors) uses monospaced fonts, which by definition cannot be kerned.

~~~
currysausage
I find this way of dismissing things that other people care about as
irrelevant quite arrogant. Yes, there are always "worse" issues. I could just
as well write: _We live on a planet full of environmental pollution, human
rights abuse, and poverty. I 'm not sure why minor usability issues in a
relatively obscure operating system justify a comment on your part._

Typography is a venerable craft, and the new wordmark has technical flaws that
one simply wouldn't expect from a high-profile project. This won't have
disastrous _consequences_ of any kind, but within the context of discussing a
post on the new logo, calling a part of the result disastrous is, IMHO,
appropriate.

Some people are genuinely interested in branding and typography, some are
simply irritated by change, therefore it's common practice to introduce new
branding with a blog post. You can see from the amount of comments that there
are quite a few people who care about this.

Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1015/](https://xkcd.com/1015/)

~~~
davidivadavid
The terrible kerning is literally the first thing I saw when I opened the
article. It's truly appalling.

------
Aardwolf
So it's the hat but without the head? That's great actually, I wouldn't even
have noticed it was new (in a good way, as in immediately recognized what it
was), yet it's fresher and simpler, even manages to evoke a 3D shape feel at
the top while being flat colored.

Good to see that new logos can also sometimes genuinely be a nice change!

~~~
nailer
The head is shadowman. I think shadowman was edgy, which doesn’t really fit
Red Hat’s status as the solid and boring Linux company.

Also people will spell Red Hat properly now (two words)

~~~
mcbits
"Red Hat" (two words) is almost a shibboleth for identifying RedHat employees.

~~~
nailer
You got me. RHCX during the Red Hat Linux 9 and RHEL 3/4 era.

~~~
mcbits
Ha, didn't mean to point the finger at you. I just rarely notice it spelled
with two words outside of official-ish communications where I assume people
have been instructed on the spelling. But some Googling suggests it's not as
rare as I thought.

------
Cynddl
Better article (despite taking 45s to load!):
[https://www.redhat.com/en/about/brand/new-
brand](https://www.redhat.com/en/about/brand/new-brand)

> We formed a task force to redesign it, bringing together people from
> different disciplines at Red Hat: graphic design, UX design, creative
> strategy, video, brand, product marketing, and more. And we worked with
> Paula Scher, a partner at design firm Pentagram, to help us focus. […] After
> 5 months of research, explorations, and brainstorming, the team found an
> elegant solution that still reflected Red Hat and could grow with us.

~~~
moron4hire
Some giant white box pops up on mobile and blocks the content completely. WTF
are they doing to their site?

~~~
andyhmltn
On desktop, the page remains white and then the new logo fades and scales into
place before the rest of the content appears. I assume they didn't test that
on mobile.

------
sweden
Some people might be interested in the reasoning behind the change:

\- [https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/open-brand-project-what-
probl...](https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/open-brand-project-what-problems-do-
we-need-solve)

~~~
elagost
That's interesting. Glad that they mentioned that the old logo always felt
"secretive and villainous" \- it did to me, too, and struck me as strange why
basically the most trusted Enterprise Linux system's logo looked shady and
creepy like the incognito-mode guy in Chrome.

~~~
tropo
"secretive and villainous" is a great match for systemd. It's also pretty good
for PulseAudio, NetworkManager, and avahi. These have all been heavily pushed
by redhat.

~~~
elagost
You know they're all open-source, right? I understand and identify with your
concerns - I've railed against systemd enough myself - but they all work
(fairly) well and have made management/administration of systems cleaner and
easier. I think that's why Red Hat's pushing them.

~~~
tropo
Lots of things from Red Hat are nominally Open Source, but you'd have to fork
a massive project to get away from Red Hat's control.

A great example is GNOME adding a systemd requirement. The key developers are
employed by Red Hat, and Red Hat chose systemd, so no consideration needs to
be given to the possibility that a Linux distribution might not want systemd.
This is how Debian was forced into systemd.

The projects very clearly do not give consideration to criticism. Choices are
made by the Red Hat teams, and that is that.

------
aquaticsunset
What’s almost as big as the logo is the change from Interstate to a brand new,
open font. I love everything about this! I’ve always had a high regard for Red
Hat’s branding and marketing.

------
twic
I hadn't seen that 1995 elongated top hat. Bring that back!

------
forsaken
Glad to see they kept the original essence and just seemingly updated it.

------
darknoon
The association with fedoras in popular culture is not positive at the moment.

Why did they pass up the opportunity to make it a more stylish kind of hat?

~~~
ufo
Replacing the classic fedora hat would probably result in mutiny.

~~~
spicyusername
You are correct. There are already plenty of unhappy internal Red Hatters mad
at shadowmans departure, let alone the hat itself.

Personally I find the change crisp and modern, and the fact that it's a fedora
is irrelevant. The company will definitely outlive the neckbeard fedora
association.

------
babo
I miss the shadow from the hat. The new logo tries to be very PC, conforming
in all possible ways. At the end, it's just boring.

~~~
airstrike
How is a new logo that depicts pretty much the same thing as the previous one
"PC"? What does that even mean? Serious question

------
benatkin
Looks more like a neckbeard fedora now. Probably did an analysis and found
that winning points with the Mountain Dew and Doritos crowd was worth more
than points lost for those who can’t stand them.

Edit: to put it another way, removing the face and putting in just the hat,
puts more attention on the hat. And it looks more like it could be a trilby
while the old hat was more of a classic fedora.

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gevn4/i-bought-a-
fedora-...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gevn4/i-bought-a-fedora-to-
see-if-it-would-ruin-my-life)

~~~
uxp100
I don't know if there is a way out of that for them. There are probably more
people who associate being unfashionable and eating unhealthy snacks with
using Linux than an old fashioned hat.

------
lucideer
I had always assumed the RedHat logo had always been a trilby, and that they
were somewhat "stuck" with it for tradition/legacy reasons.

I now see that only one of their three previous logos (excluding wordmark
changes) has been a trilby, which would seem to make migrating away from it
easier. Given the modern 4chan association, I wonder has there been anyone
internally at RH voicing such a suggestion.

Also... while the new one is definitely an improvement on the last, their
pre-97 logos were great!

------
ConfusedDog
Not sure if it's my display or something, the black ribbon on the fedora
appears jittered when resized for the top navigation bar on their website.

Overall, I think the color is a bit too bright for me. I liked the 1999
version... that's just my personal preference.

But it looks pretty good as favicon.

------
agnokapathetic
This is great, still recognizable, flexible and somewhat fresh.

Compare to Slack’s logo rebrand:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18923719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18923719)

------
sp332
I don't have anything of substance to add, so I'll just point out that it's
"homing in on" not "honing". Honing is what you do to a knife blade.

~~~
cvs268
_> Honing is what you do to a knife blade._

...or to your skills.

------
addicted
I like it. Better than many logo redesigns we’ve seen lately, and a much
better fit to modern tastes than the previous logo.

As an aside, I feel strangely nervous to say I actually liked something on the
internet. (I mention that because I got the same feeling after the GoT episode
this weekend, which I really enjoyed). It seems that actually liking something
(which is not the same as saying it has no flaws) just does not seem to fit
with the modern internet vibe.

------
SmellyGeekBoy
Woah, that's a _really_ bright shade of red!

I like it, FWIW.

------
goda90
So long, dinosaur giving a thumbs up.

------
nik736
Please change the URL to the website. White logo on a white background doesn't
make sense.

------
timdorr
They open sourced their new fonts:
[https://github.com/RedHatOfficial/RedHatFont](https://github.com/RedHatOfficial/RedHatFont)

~~~
jedieaston
When it is distributed into other applications, do we have to call it
Community ENTerprise Font?

------
mikece
Simpler is better for a logo -- I like it!

------
sneakernets
I'll miss photoshopping Michael Jackson's face under the hat.

------
Timucin
I liked the logo but that red is too bright for my liking.

------
mansr
They switched from a T-rex to a hat. Makes sense.

------
fraun
Very flat

------
geodel
Did this website get re-implemented on IBM Websphere stack? It simply did not
load for me.

------
lasermike026
I have a bad feeling about this.

------
johnmorrow
Tl;dr - it’s a fedora lol

------
samsolomon
Maybe linking to the post talking about the brand refresh would be more
insightful than the SVG?

[https://www.redhat.com/en/about/brand/new-
brand](https://www.redhat.com/en/about/brand/new-brand)

~~~
sctb
Yes, thanks! We've updated the link from
[https://www.redhat.com/profiles/rh/themes/redhatdotcom/img/l...](https://www.redhat.com/profiles/rh/themes/redhatdotcom/img/logo.svg).

------
sheeshkebab
I thought it would be blue with letters IBM

~~~
moocowtruck
they are underneath the hat

------
stephw81
love it

