Hold the presses. Forget about the 2016 election. Forget about the wildfire in Alberta. Instagram got a new icon.
That’s right, people. The playful Polaroid camera is no longer the symbol for the third most popular social media application. Instead, the company decided to use fuchsia and orange, the colors I associate with “That’s So Raven,” and a simple outline for a camera. It is quite a change from the fancy and detailed Polaroid SX-70 with the cute little rainbow in the top left corner that we all know and love.
According to the company’s blog, Instagram is evolving from “a place to share filtered photos to so much more — a global community of interests.” This is essentially a fluffy way of saying that the company is trying to keep up with competing social media platforms in becoming a more global and universal way for people to communicate and share, even if that means it loses its original charm. It isn’t something we haven’t seen before. It’s just the classic case of when the nerdy girl suddenly gets cool and forgets her old friends.
The original app only allowed for pictures to be in a square format in order to stay true to the look of Polaroid pictures, but with time, the app changed the way that pictures were uploaded in order to cater to users’ needs to have pictures in different formats. Now, photographs can be uploaded in a landscape or portrait manner. With the difference in the way that pictures can be uploaded in addition to the new icon, the company further deviates from appealing our hipster generation with the original idea of being an app to digitize photographs in a vintage aesthetic. There is little similarity between the old look and the current one. It’s pretty sad really. Being a sucker for all ‘70s things, the vintage feel of the original look was an aspect that I really liked about the app.
The new logo is a lot to get used to, especially when it is an application that people click on daily, generating 1 billion likes per day. Most people are not accustomed to change and I’m not the only one not really digging the new logo. A writer about technology for the New York Times, Farhan Manjoo, was thoroughly disappointed with the new logo, stating, “It’s passable, if a little generic.” I’m not going to lie — I have done the little thumb twiddling thing while I was looking to open the new Instagram logo because I completely skipped over the new, generic look. Sorry Instagram, but Manjoo is right.
The Times writers were not the only ones to take a crack at making fun of Instagram’s new icon. Plenty of Twitter users found ways to show how they feel about the new logo. One of the funnier and more popular tweets was from @UltraLinx stating, “How the new Instagram icon was made” accompanied with a video of a kid messing around with Paint on an old computer. It was probably one of the more popular tweets because the color scheme can actually be found on the old Paint software’s premade color pallets. Talk about being original.
The reaction to the logo is generally negative, but, in Instagram’s defense, it is just trying to keep up with what it thinks its users want. We move fast as a generation. Even though we like to embody trends from the past, we want it in a modernized manner. Fashion is constantly introducing revitalized versions of past trends such as flare jeans and choker necklaces. Movies, like the recent version of “The Great Gatsby,” are constantly being redone, as if the original version of the movie isn’t current enough to be watched in the 21st century. We can’t let Instagram be left in the dust while its competition is pushing to be quicker and sleeker, now can we?
Whatever it may be, the new logo is here to stay. I may not be a fan, but I’m not going to stop using it just because the icon is pretty basic. How would you see all those formal pictures or no-makeup selfies? Exactly. This is important stuff. So, my advice is not to put the app next to your Dunkin’ Donuts one, and you should be good to go.
