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I know it is easy to be cynical on these types of "announcements", but I am having a really, really hard time understanding how curved strokes (or any branding

I know it is easy to be cynical on these types of "announcements", but I am having a really, really hard time understanding how curved strokes (or any branding decision) can result in empathy or "open space for peoples stories". Empathy is a human characteristic. To think that a word mark can have (or even create) it is patently ridiculous. In fact, I'd say it cheapens the meaning of the word to the point where true empathy means less. This press release contains a type of language specific to our current time that will age like milk.

pikopoketta 7y ago
I've passed by typographic classes during my art major. Letters that have human like shapes generate empathy and becomes easier to read. That's one of the first thing they taught us. You need a touch of organic feel to the letters shapes for the words to flow better. Fonts like Futura generate less empathy and are harder to read subsequently because it's all made of pure geometric shapes. Any designer with taste will never use this font for long text. This is a very basic typographic concept. Which imo make sense as a marketing speech for a brand that try to not offend anyone. Pure corporate blandness
- hoschicz 7y ago
  This is the answer the engineers are looking for, I think; thank you.
pvg 7y ago
It's supposed to evoke these things, along with the the rest of the company's branding and messaging. Whether it does (or even can) is a different question but the idea behind this wooly-sounding stuff is not that the designs inherently have or create things like 'empathy'. It's a way to guide the design process and evaluate the designs. If a designer came up with an FB logo that uses the Doom font, the other people working on branding can look at it and ask 'Does this evoke empathy?'
papln 7y ago
What's sad is that either (a) the brouhaha is a either a lie ot justify an overpaid designer's pay, or (b) it's not a lie, and Facebook is openly bragging about covertly manipulating its users via branding.
- sweetheart 7y ago
  This is how all branding works. It is, from what I can tell, the very point of branding. Certainly not limited to Facebook alone.
madoublet 7y ago
I feel the irony is that a lot of the text arrangements in the examples do not have enough contrast to be universally accessible. So, I feel like even the designers are missing the point on empathy.
paxys 7y ago
It isn't ridiculous at all. Human feelings are very easily influenced by sights and sounds and other external stimuli. Every company out there is fine tuning their brand, advertising, logo, colors etc. to trigger specific emotional responses from you.
- skummetmaelk 7y ago
  s/influenced/manipulated The difference is important. Influencing does not necessarily imply malice and exploitation. Manipulation does.
pembrook 7y ago
You don't understand it because, like myself and most people on this site, you're probably a hyper-rational engineering type. We gravitated towards working in this field for a reason. The rest of the world has very strong negative reactions when confronted with a product branded like this: https://www.vim.org https://www.vim.org ...and they have very positive reactions to a product branded like this: https://slack.com https://slack.com How could the reaction be so different when we're just talking about a few lines, curves, colors and aesthetics? It turns out, most humans are emotionally stimulated by visual associations and stories. This is the definition of branding. Empathy would be understanding that most people are not like us.
- pvg 7y ago
  like myself and most people on this site, you're probably a hyper-rational engineering type. I think you're both engaging in and are affected by mythologizing and branding right in your comment so perhaps neither you nor the people you're referring to are as 'hyper-rational' as you imagine. I doubt anyone is particularly emotionally engaged by Slack's inoffensive hipster-corporatist design language and for a work tool, that's probably both intentional and about right. Vim, on the other hand, is one of the closest things programmers have to a full-on impractical fashion trend, a sort of aspirational zoot suit. There are even special ribbons for the pork pie hat: https://github.com/powerline/powerline https://github.com/powerline/powerline
  - pembrook 7y ago
    I think you are right! The whole identity of thinking of yourself as "engineering type" is likely fulfilling some emotional need to belong to a group you perceive as superior. However, I'm also certain the hipster-corporatist brand aesthetic of products like Slack is exactly part of the appeal. It definitely signals that slack is a tool used by a certain "tribe." And if you aspire to be in that tribe, this tool is for you. Call it the tribe of life-work optimizers and the open office, if you will.
    - pvg 7y ago
      And if you aspire to be in that tribe, this tool is for you Slack's branding certainly has a purpose but I think it's more about broad acceptance than individual aspirations - it has to look like something people use at work. There's a whiff of 'tech' and even playfulness to it but it's sensibly calibrated to be business-anodyne. There is also an element of edginess but it's neatly and entirely contained in the name. By this point, though, 'Slack' has almost become a generic term for 'work chat' so there's little danger anyone with purchasing authority is going to confuse it with one of the foundational concepts of the Church of the SubGenius™. Slack's branding is more akin to the logo you see on the side of the floor buffing machine building maintenance workers guide around the office at night. That's not there to inspire anyone to join the hardworking tribe of building maintenance workers.
whytaka 7y ago
As a former brand designer, it's either simple word associations or post-hoc rationalisation.
Jack000 7y ago
It's fine to critique the implementation of a brand, but it doesn't change the fact that branding has real tangible value. If they don't use a curvy wordmark, it would have to be some other arbitrary mark. for reference, the coca cola brand is worth an estimated 57 billion USD, and at the end of the day it is just a curvy font and some colors. It's worth at least a few million to maximize brand recognition by choosing the right curvy font.
jhanschoo 7y ago
> I know it is easy to be cynical on these types of "announcements", but I am having a really, really hard time understanding how curved strokes (or any branding decision) can result in empathy or "open space for peoples stories". They don't "result" in empathy, but the design is meant to reinforce that. In our inherited tradition of typography, the modernist era inspired so-called geometric letterforms based on very few basic shapes, and while those letterforms were very distinctive, clear, and straightforward, they lacked the familiar structure, that "human" and "organic" feel that comes out of handwritten letterforms. This brand chosen for facebook is, at its core, geometric; it reinforces and puts center the notion of clarity that it intends to communicate. This clarity and simplicity is actually quite practically demonstrable: you see that the branding team demonstrates it in various shades superimposed on all kinds on stock branding photos and video, and yet it is recognizable and easily identifiable. Not all marks of companies can be used in this way; some are so inflexible that they can only be displayed in one palette in fixed Pantone colors before a white background. Nonetheless, as they are proud to state, the mark deviates from the geometric paradigm in a subtle yet clear way in the curved strokes of the A and K. It is not so overdone that it obscures the inherent clarity and simplicity of the geometric paradigm, but clearly present to show a conscious acknowledgement and recognition. Ironically, in the branding videos with the FB mark superimposed, the extreme versatility and yet extreme distinctiveness of the FB mark highlights a very FB-ish behavior. They want to, and want to be able to fit into all kinds of social space that you have, and to do so without losing its distinct FB identity, so that you are aware of its presence in all kinds of social activity that you experience. To a large extent, it has accomplished that (e.g. use of FB and IG in marketing and organizing events).

pikopoketta 7y ago

I've passed by typographic classes during my art major. Letters that have human like shapes generate empathy and becomes easier to read. That's one of the first thing they taught us. You need a touch of organic feel to the letters shapes for the words to flow better. Fonts like Futura generate less empathy and are harder to read subsequently because it's all made of pure geometric shapes. Any designer with taste will never use this font for long text. This is a very basic typographic concept. Which imo make sense as a marketing speech for a brand that try to not offend anyone. Pure corporate blandness

hoschicz 7y ago
This is the answer the engineers are looking for, I think; thank you.

pvg 7y ago

It's supposed to evoke these things, along with the the rest of the company's branding and messaging. Whether it does (or even can) is a different question but the idea behind this wooly-sounding stuff is not that the designs inherently have or create things like 'empathy'. It's a way to guide the design process and evaluate the designs. If a designer came up with an FB logo that uses the Doom font, the other people working on branding can look at it and ask 'Does this evoke empathy?'

papln 7y ago

What's sad is that either (a) the brouhaha is a either a lie ot justify an overpaid designer's pay, or (b) it's not a lie, and Facebook is openly bragging about covertly manipulating its users via branding.

sweetheart 7y ago
This is how all branding works. It is, from what I can tell, the very point of branding. Certainly not limited to Facebook alone.

madoublet 7y ago

I feel the irony is that a lot of the text arrangements in the examples do not have enough contrast to be universally accessible. So, I feel like even the designers are missing the point on empathy.

paxys 7y ago

It isn't ridiculous at all. Human feelings are very easily influenced by sights and sounds and other external stimuli. Every company out there is fine tuning their brand, advertising, logo, colors etc. to trigger specific emotional responses from you.

skummetmaelk 7y ago
s/influenced/manipulated The difference is important. Influencing does not necessarily imply malice and exploitation. Manipulation does.

pembrook 7y ago

You don't understand it because, like myself and most people on this site, you're probably a hyper-rational engineering type. We gravitated towards working in this field for a reason. The rest of the world has very strong negative reactions when confronted with a product branded like this: https://www.vim.org https://www.vim.org ...and they have very positive reactions to a product branded like this: https://slack.com https://slack.com How could the reaction be so different when we're just talking about a few lines, curves, colors and aesthetics? It turns out, most humans are emotionally stimulated by visual associations and stories. This is the definition of branding. Empathy would be understanding that most people are not like us.

pvg 7y ago
like myself and most people on this site, you're probably a hyper-rational engineering type. I think you're both engaging in and are affected by mythologizing and branding right in your comment so perhaps neither you nor the people you're referring to are as 'hyper-rational' as you imagine. I doubt anyone is particularly emotionally engaged by Slack's inoffensive hipster-corporatist design language and for a work tool, that's probably both intentional and about right. Vim, on the other hand, is one of the closest things programmers have to a full-on impractical fashion trend, a sort of aspirational zoot suit. There are even special ribbons for the pork pie hat: https://github.com/powerline/powerline https://github.com/powerline/powerline
- pembrook 7y ago
  I think you are right! The whole identity of thinking of yourself as "engineering type" is likely fulfilling some emotional need to belong to a group you perceive as superior. However, I'm also certain the hipster-corporatist brand aesthetic of products like Slack is exactly part of the appeal. It definitely signals that slack is a tool used by a certain "tribe." And if you aspire to be in that tribe, this tool is for you. Call it the tribe of life-work optimizers and the open office, if you will.
  - pvg 7y ago
    And if you aspire to be in that tribe, this tool is for you Slack's branding certainly has a purpose but I think it's more about broad acceptance than individual aspirations - it has to look like something people use at work. There's a whiff of 'tech' and even playfulness to it but it's sensibly calibrated to be business-anodyne. There is also an element of edginess but it's neatly and entirely contained in the name. By this point, though, 'Slack' has almost become a generic term for 'work chat' so there's little danger anyone with purchasing authority is going to confuse it with one of the foundational concepts of the Church of the SubGenius™. Slack's branding is more akin to the logo you see on the side of the floor buffing machine building maintenance workers guide around the office at night. That's not there to inspire anyone to join the hardworking tribe of building maintenance workers.

whytaka 7y ago

As a former brand designer, it's either simple word associations or post-hoc rationalisation.

Jack000 7y ago

It's fine to critique the implementation of a brand, but it doesn't change the fact that branding has real tangible value. If they don't use a curvy wordmark, it would have to be some other arbitrary mark. for reference, the coca cola brand is worth an estimated 57 billion USD, and at the end of the day it is just a curvy font and some colors. It's worth at least a few million to maximize brand recognition by choosing the right curvy font.

jhanschoo 7y ago

> I know it is easy to be cynical on these types of "announcements", but I am having a really, really hard time understanding how curved strokes (or any branding decision) can result in empathy or "open space for peoples stories". They don't "result" in empathy, but the design is meant to reinforce that. In our inherited tradition of typography, the modernist era inspired so-called geometric letterforms based on very few basic shapes, and while those letterforms were very distinctive, clear, and straightforward, they lacked the familiar structure, that "human" and "organic" feel that comes out of handwritten letterforms. This brand chosen for facebook is, at its core, geometric; it reinforces and puts center the notion of clarity that it intends to communicate. This clarity and simplicity is actually quite practically demonstrable: you see that the branding team demonstrates it in various shades superimposed on all kinds on stock branding photos and video, and yet it is recognizable and easily identifiable. Not all marks of companies can be used in this way; some are so inflexible that they can only be displayed in one palette in fixed Pantone colors before a white background. Nonetheless, as they are proud to state, the mark deviates from the geometric paradigm in a subtle yet clear way in the curved strokes of the A and K. It is not so overdone that it obscures the inherent clarity and simplicity of the geometric paradigm, but clearly present to show a conscious acknowledgement and recognition. Ironically, in the branding videos with the FB mark superimposed, the extreme versatility and yet extreme distinctiveness of the FB mark highlights a very FB-ish behavior. They want to, and want to be able to fit into all kinds of social space that you have, and to do so without losing its distinct FB identity, so that you are aware of its presence in all kinds of social activity that you experience. To a large extent, it has accomplished that (e.g. use of FB and IG in marketing and organizing events).