The new Uber branding is why you need Latice Design.

10:01 AM Latice Design 0 Comments

Old & New Uber Logo and App icon.

Uber quite recently changed its company’s branding from its iconic horseshoe type U to something that looks like a macbook charger. Besides the app icon they also changed their company logo font which was for the better, the new Uber text looks sleek and elegant all the time remaining modern and professional.

Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick's personal preferences played a big role in shaping the new design. The company wanted to replace its metallic black and silver palette, which was hard to adapt for holidays and soften to appear less aggressive. The design team had to grin and bear it. Here is Wired's description of Shalin Amin, Uber's design director, and his team, working on the new color scheme:

"Kalanick became engrossed, evaluating pixels and colors according to what he euphemistically calls his "unique" set of preferences. Light smirks ripple across the room. "I basically gave up understanding what your personal preference was," Shalin tells him. "I was like, ‘he’s got this pastel thing going with, like, bright colors.’"

Colour & Pattern Moodboards.

In the end, the team realized it didn't make sense for a company doing business in 65 countries to have its look defined by a single 40-year-old white guy in San Francisco. So the redesign will allow each regional arm to have its own "country-specific colour and pattern palettes" alongside five global ones.

The new Uber Passenger & Uber Driver App icons.

The problem with the bit and the texture the atoms is that, at least judging from the main Uber website, there is no real synergy between them and no relationship to the logo or the rest of the layout and typography. It’s all nicely placed on there but it feels like patchwork.