My opinions are mine and do not represent any person or organization.

Here I am late to the party as usual. Everyone on Wattpad had been talking about the new logo and branding. Some hate it, some love, and some don’t care.

When I first saw it, I thought they’d changed from orange to red. I was a little sad at first, but I then realized it was a red-orange–Hero Orange to be exact. I felt a little bit better. The other orange was a bit…too loud. The Hero Orange is still a little loud but not as much; it’s more of a calm-energetic loud–not a “I’m going to burn your retinas” loud. I have to agree with the Wattpad officials in their article about why they changed (found here); the new color is definitely more noticeable. I was quickly able to find the Wattpad app on my iPad.

I’m not too sure how I feel about the changes in the app though. I was looking through my notifications feed and the text was a light black. The text almost vanished into the white background. So far, I would tell them to up the darkness of the text a little.

I have to agree with the Wattpad Powers That Be that the old logo and wordmark looked machine-like. The old logo was very professional and as they said, “static.” It looked like something you might find on the website of a law firm or tax consultant. It didn’t look like something that belonged on a website made for creative people.

The new logo and wordmark have a more relaxed feeling. They look as if they are handwritten not machine-written. Though some of the rational the designers gave for the wordmark, like the connected “T”s being a reference to the Wattpad Community, were a bit much. I’m not sure how many people would make that connection. On the other hand, as a graphic designer, I know how you can obsess over some elements. You can also think some swoosh is really neat but no one ever cares.

It is important to note that if the designers left out some of those touches, the result would portray a whole different set of feelings.

As for the new tagline–Where Stories Live–the jury is still out. I do think it is better than “Stories You’ll Love.” There are plenty of stories on Wattpad I don’t love. There are also stories that are okay. Does that mean they lied to me? I could easy see someone getting upset because they were “promised” stories they’ll love.

The new tagline is more welcoming. Also, it makes it sound like the stories are living things, constantly evolving, which is what happens on Wattpad. An author publishes a story thinking it is finished, but the comments tell the author that the plot is weak or they need to edit more. The story grows and becomes better instead of just being published and that’s it.

Love the new branding or don’t, it doesn’t matter much, but I wanted to give it a shot before passing judgement. It probably took the designers and owners a long time and a lot of hard work to come up with it. I wanted to respect that time spent and at least read why they changed. Also after a few weeks, it’ll be like the old logo, I won’t even notice it. I’ll be so busy logging on to the site, reading stories, and writing stories I won’t register its existence.

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