Instagram has announced that it is bringing a major upgrade to its brand element and visual identity.
The media-sharing platform announced earlier today, via a post on its official blog, that it would be implementing “new energy and purpose.” It said the revamping of its visual interface would be done to its colors, typeface, logo and other brand elements, giving it a refreshed visual identity.
The brand makeover announced by Instagram will include a typeface of its own, which it calls Instagram Sans. IG said it plans to implement the use of the font broadly, in both its marketing channels, and all-over the Instagram app.
According to Instagram, the typeface was inspired by Instagram’s logo, and how it “reflects the shape of the glyph” and the company’s “commitment to simplicity and craft.”
“Instagram Sans is also a new way for our global community to express themselves on Instagram in places like Stories and Reels. While designing this new typeface, our goal was to make Instagram Sans globally accessible. We partnered with language experts around the world to adapt the typeface to global scripts including Arabic, Thai and Japanese,” the company said in its blogspot.
The company added that its “new layout and design system is content-forward and celebrates creativity, simplicity and self-expression,” and the gradient on its logo will be “reimagined with vibrant colors to make it feel illuminated and alive, and to signal moments of discovery.”
“Our new design system puts content at the center, with a focus on simplicity and self-expression. The new marketing layouts for Instagram showcase full-screen imagery, reference the in-app experience and celebrate the creativity we see from our community every day.”
Read also: Interswitch raises $110 million to expand its digital payment services
Noting further, the company said its new logo was inspired largely by the combination of squares and circles, which it calls squircles. And, as Instagram has always tried to do, it is a mix of pixel-perfect and hand-made with a few details, like the not quite straight terminal at the bottom of the “t,” that make it look more human.
The new IG layout is also a way by the app to put content in the forefront, and focus on simplicity and expression.
Instagram is hoping that its users will implement the new fonts in their Stories and Reels, especially, as this would make their videos look a little less than that of its rival, TikTok.
Instagram is one of the social media apps owned by Meta. It was founded in 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, before it was acquired in 2012 by Facebook Inc. for $1 billion. Initially, the app only allowed photos to be uploaded in 1:1 aspect ratio of 640 pixels – matching iPhone’s display at that time. The strict frame was later relaxed to make room for the implementation of further upgrades.