
Uber Rebrand - stuartmemo
https://www.uber.design/case-studies/rebrand-2018
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tyingq
I'm a layperson for matters related to design. But, for me, that looks like a
lot of thinking and writing... just to land on a mundane font with the company
name in white on black.

Perhaps it makes sense though, again, not my wheelhouse.

~~~
chris_wot
What seems like a very easy thing to do is actually quite difficult. Antoine
de Saint-Exupéry said that "It seems that perfection is attained, not when
there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away."

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2pointsomone
Why does a company like Uber, which tweaked it's brand only recently, have go
through a rebrand all over again? I can imagine it is an extremely expensive
endeavor.

I have for long appreciated the business value of design, but often struggle
to understand why big companies tweak their brand in small iterations?

~~~
_sentient
It's a fairly time-honored tactic to redesign a brand that has lots of
negative associations built up, and I could see Dara driving this as part of
the overhaul. Typically that results in a full name change though.

Having read through this, it sounds like the brand team considered more
radical changes but ultimately found that the broad name recognition and
generally positive associations with the stark black/white aesthetic were too
strong to ditch entirely. What remained was the ability to iterate on the
original brand, and that's what you got.

I agree with ditching "the bit" icon in favor of a "U" though. That logo made
zero sense, and always felt like a creative team stretching to imbue an
abstract mark with some sort of meaning.

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2pointsomone
Thanks for that perspective, Jeremy. But I think hidden in that question was
an underlying question: does changing the brand in non-radical ways change
perception in people's minds?

The answer might be yes for Dara, but it seems unintuitive to me.

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majewsky
> does changing the brand in non-radical ways change perception in people's
> minds?

It definitely does for me. I'm not an Uber user (doesn't exist in Germany),
but I know the previous design system. When I looked through this page, I also
had the impression that their new CEO has to do with this because it evokes
more feminine qualities than the previous corporate design. I cannot exactly
pin-point this; I'm just going by the feelings it evokes in me. It somehow
feels warmer and more empathetic to me (to the extent that a tech giant can be
perceived as warm and empathetic).

It's definitely what Uber needs right now on the design front. Let's see how
much it helps them regain trust.

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whalesalad
I like all of this. As a system it's very cohesive and makes a lot of sense.
It's fresh and at least aligns with the new image of Uber which afaik is
essentially "we are totally not the old uber". I do wish they would have
brought back a logo alongside the logomark. The outgoing 'chinese coin' logo
was not doing anything for them but it is clear that the U is important and I
think they could have done that justice by using it for more than the
'u-frame'

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Zanni
Uber doesn't need a visual refresh, they need a values refresh. People who are
choosing not to use Uber now aren't put off by the logo but by their corporate
culture. Maybe, _maybe_ if they got that sorted out first, they could come up
with a visual identity to support the new and improved Uber that would have
some value.

~~~
whalesalad
It's been a while, are you sure they are still the same old Uber? Do you work
there? Do you know people who work there? At some point a company needs to go
through a rebrand to change their image both internally and externally.

~~~
icebraining
Uber's reckless manslaughter happened just a few months ago. Nothing else is
necessary to know they still need to change.

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umeshunni
1\. One of the goals with their original rebrand to a logo was to make the
brand more accessible to people in markets that don't use Latin scripts. Looks
like this rebrand abandons that goal. 2\. Why do another rebrand just two
years after the last one? New team, new leader, new OKR?

~~~
cjhopman
Uber has since then abandoned a lot of those markets that don't use Latin
scripts.

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swampthinker
Is it just me, or is this page incredible bloated and slow to load?

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blueline
i got 36.2 mb of resources on a page load without caching

yikes

~~~
majewsky
36.2 MB is pretty much par for the course for design showcases. This is not a
news website, and not Craigslist, either.

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ggggtez
Isn't that the "Cards Against Humanity" font?
[https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/51078183?wid=1400](https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/51078183?wid=1400)

I can see the "g" is different, but it's pretty close...

~~~
minimaxir
That's just plain Helvetica.

~~~
etatoby
It looked like a medley between Futura / Century Gothic and Helvetica to me.

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invalidusernam3
The frame design element is nice. Other than that, I find the simple branding
style that a lot of companies are adopting to be very bland. I like
minimalism, but there is very little to set this new branding apart from the
dozens of other companies with very similar branding styles.

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jkravitz61
Is it just me, or are they slowly gravitating towards Crate & Barrel's
aesthetic?

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pg_bot
Creating your own typeface seems a bit excessive. Here are the things that I
would change based on my first reaction.

\- Remove the tail on the Uppercase "U"

\- Uppercase "I" and lowercase "l" are identical.

\- Rewrite the lowercase "g" as it looks like an "o" with a "j" attached.

\- The tail on the lowercase "j" is cut off prematurely.

\- The tail on the lowercase "a" should be straight instead of curved out.
Will cause problems with tracking.

Would love to see the rest of the ascii chars, as typeface designers often get
a bit too crazy with some of the symbols and it really makes or breaks the
design.

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jdhn
Liking the new logo, but the rest of it just seems...ok? I really hope they
tone down that motion, watching it on the screen made me go "Woah", and not in
a good way.

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anonytrary
Sure, their website is slow, takes a bit to load the media, and uses up your
CPU -- but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't an aesthetically pleasing website.
Their website reminds me of a musician's website for some reason. Scrolling
through the page tells you a story about the Uber brand. I especially liked
the "System Icons" section and how they use a slider to let you transition
between light and dark versions of the icons.

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coffeeandjunk
Uber's customers wanted the 'U' back. More than better service, low prices,
and cab availability. So they gave it to them.

[https://twitter.com/coffeeandjunk/status/1040097766331084800](https://twitter.com/coffeeandjunk/status/1040097766331084800)

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sanityvampire
I'm just thinking of all the windshield stickers they're gonna have to hand
out...

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pcmaffey
Wow, I (ready for jaded-HN criticisms...) actually think its terrible. The U
and the B are too closely linked, which de-stresses the syllabic bridge,
undermining the emphasis on the U, and its unique and cool "long"
pronunciation. Makes me want to pronounce it like 'blubber' without the 'bl'.

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iamleppert
tl; dr: “We’ve found the color black resonates well with our brand...and our
corporate soul.”

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Jormundir
That has got to be one of the most poorly designed websites I've ever seen.
I'm on a wired desktop and it's barely loading. Why are there like 5-10
physical inch gaps between sections? Why is there a full page picture at the
top with no text or anything?

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ASalazarMX
> Why is there a full page picture at the top with no text or anything?

That confused me a little, I thought this was an homonym company related to
plants or ecology. It didn't help that the rest of the images never loaded on
the first try.

