SUMMARY
Learn how teams across Facebook came together to evolve and unify the app’s brand identity.
Highlights of the Facebook brand identity system.
With 2 billion daily active users coming to Facebook each day, our app is a place where people can explore, connect and share their interests with real people. And, we’re continuously evolving to make it easier for people to discover more about the world around them with the help of others — from connecting with those who matter most, to finding communities that share interests, to exploring new ideas and experiences that fuel curiosity.
As we continue our evolution as an app and a brand, we’re excited to launch the first phase of a refreshed identity system for Facebook, with a focus on fostering effortless, self-initiated exploration and connection across every touchpoint.
There were 3 key drivers behind the evolution of our brand identity design:
- Elevate the most iconic elements of our brand to create a distinctive, refreshed Facebook
- Unify how the Facebook brand comes to life across product-to-marketing experiences
- Create an expansive set of colors — anchored in our core blue — that is comprehensive and vibrant, and also designed to be more accessible for people
Driving the Facebook logo forward
Our intention was to create a refreshed design of the Facebook logo that was bolder, electric and everlasting. Each of the distinctive, new refinements drive greater harmony across the entire design as a key element of the app’s identity. We’ve done this by incorporating a more confident expression of Facebook’s core blue color that is built to be more visually accessible in our app and provides stronger contrast for the “f” to stand apart.
“The goal of our work was to expand upon our foundation and create the defining mark of our brand that anchors the identity system across Facebook. We wanted to ensure that the refreshed logo felt familiar, yet dynamic, polished and elegant in execution. These subtle, but significant changes allowed us to achieve optical balance with a sense of forward movement.”
- Dave N., Director of Design, Facebook
Using our custom typeface, Facebook Sans, we redesigned the wordmark and logo to create a consistent treatment and improve overall legibility across Facebook. Similar to the changes to the logo symbol, these refinements allowed us to build upon the heritage of our identity, while creating a stronger relationship between how the wordmark pairs with the rest of the typeface.
A dynamic color range
In addition to the logo, we also developed a new color palette. We crafted a new set of hues, tones and contrast ratios that felt unique to the Facebook brand and are optimized for accessibility. Blue, unsurprisingly, remains the foundational color, and pairs with our expanded spectrum to create stronger distinction for Facebook in marketing and when speaking to people in the app. The deep tonal range of secondary blues allows for flexibility while providing balance as a single expression of our brand identity.
Refining our Reactions
Reactions are a visual way for people to respond to a post, comment or story, and are also a meaningful way for people to express themselves as they interact with what they discover on Facebook.
The updates to Reactions are testing and will be rolled out in the coming months.
Through our expanded color palette, we were able to evoke more dimensionality and emotion in Reactions. We adjusted colors to meet color accessibility guidance so that our iconography is legible at any size, flexible enough for different needs and easy for people to interact with. Leaving no pixel unturned, we rebuilt the entire iconography system so that it scales with a wide range of expressions across each moment within the app.
From functional to expressive, our entire iconography system was redesigned to scale for different uses.
Bringing the design system to life in the app
This multidisciplinary effort was a culmination of teams working together to visualize Facebook. Through this design system, we are able to bring our brand to life through the app, enabling dynamic and effortless exploration.
“Strong integration and partnership between product, brand strategy, brand design and engineering have been the key to driving cohesion across the entire design system. We look forward to continuing this collaboration and bringing the brand to life.”
- May H., Director of Design, Meta
This initial release of design updates to the app includes our redesigned logo and wordmark, as well as an updated color palette, Reactions, typography and iconography — with more updates to be rolled out in the future. All of these refinements will create a more consistent, personal and seamless experience for the billions of people who interact with Facebook daily — to explore, connect and share with each other.
A modernized design language that is simpler, easier and more dynamic, created specifically with a global audience in mind.
Looking towards tomorrow
“Every interaction a person has with Facebook, inside or outside the app, shapes how they think about and experience our brand — from the stories they hear to the content they see when they open the app.”
- Briana V., Global Director of Facebook Brand Marketing
We will continue to evolve Facebook’s design to meet people’s needs, making it easier to explore and connect around their interests. Our focus remains on creating people-first experiences to help others make progress on the things that matter most to them.
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