Instagram's new logo, clean and minimal

Instagram has undergone a redesign, which sees the social media platform replace its vintage camera icon for a more minimal symbol.

The refresh has been completed by Instagram’s in-house design team. The new look aims to “unify’ all of the different apps with the same style, in line with how Instagram has developed as more than just a place to edit and share photos, says the app.

Instagram’s well-known previous logo was a life-like vintage camera with a rainbow mark – the new logo sees a cleaner, flatter symbol, which reimagines the rainbow as a gradient that seeps over the whole icon.

The camera shape is reimagined through a series of flat shapes: a soft square, with a circle and a dot contained within it, representing the lens and viewfinder of the camera. During the design process, the in-house team found the lens, viewfinder and rainbow were the most distinctive features of the original logo, after people were asked to draw it from memory.

GOOGLE IN FOR A PENNY...

Google introduced their new logo. Just a month after unveiling a major restructuring of the company, Google is updating its image, too.

The new Google logo is still a wordmark, but it's now using a sans-serif typeface, making it look a lot more modern and playful with the use of softer primary colours. The logo bears a bit more resemblance to the logo of Google's new parent company, Alphabet, as well.

SAYING THAT.... I do feel that a bit of the original fun and quirkyness has been lost; all a bit too stripping back makes it all feel a touch more sterile than before.

 

Why did Google create alphabet?

Google alphabet

Google was too big for its own good. Housing everything from its search engine to robots to life-extension technologies in one corporate hierarchy made for a lot of managers. Smart people often loathe such paralyzing bureaucracy. That’s why breaking up the company under the new parent company name, Alphabet, could save Google from itself.

Google today declared its name will now just host its core business. Its other, more far-flung projects like Life Sciences (glucose-measuring contact lenses) and Calico (life extension), will live somewhat independently alongside Google inside the new conglomerate it calls Alphabet.

Bond where you going. I need you. So does England

James bond - Spectre

From snatches of the theme to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in the score, to the Day of the Dead chase sequence’s close resemblance to the Mardi-Gras scene in 1965’s Thunderball, to the Bond-goes-rogue with help from Q storyline, the nods to 007’s past come thick and fast. The Austrian mountaintop clinic where Bond meets Swann even recalls a similar alpine medical retreat in OHMSS, and then there’s Oberhauser’s Dr No-influenced Nehru jacket. There’s more than one Spectre involved here.

BBC vs APPLE in the battle of Radio download

BBC vs Apple Radio

For the first time ever, radio and music lovers will be able to download BBC radio programmes in full, to their smartphone or tablet for free, listen to them offline, and keep them for up to 30 days on the BBC iPlayer Radio app.

The update, rolling out this week, means fans can listen to BBC radio programmes anywhere, regardless of the availability of wi-fi or a 3G/4G signal - so that's on trains, on planes, at the top of mountains, or on board a submarine.

As long as the programme is downloaded in the UK, it will remain on the device for a month and will include all the music, and third-party content, from the original broadcast. These downloads will embrace the entire BBC radio network, including programmes such as the BBC Proms, Radio 1’s Essential Mix, Radio 2's Jeremy Vine show, and a host of Radio 4 drama, comedy or documentaries.

 

Great Club Lounge design by Virgin

“Virgin has a much broader, more sophisticated understanding of its brand than some other airlines. Some parts are tangible and some parts you experience. They know how space feels. You don’t notice logos anywhere or red, apart from the uniform. They understand that their brand is not a logo and colour but an experience and that gives us a tremendous amount of freedom.”

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