Your iPhone home screen says a lot about you. How many times a day do you look at that thing? 

My home screen is reserved for only the best app icons… but there is a caveat- I have to actually use the app too. 

Sitting in the top right of my screen is Instagram. Since being elevated to the top row of the homescreen on my first iPhone, I have been choosing between #filter #tiltshift and #nofilter. I have posted the odd #fromwhereistand and definitely, plenty of #cat.

There have been numerous UI redesigns and the app is very pretty. One thing that has always bugged me though, is the use of the Billabong script for their wordmark. Using a non-custom font for your branding is fine in most cases. American Airlines, Lufthansa and The North Face have used Helvetica to great effect. But I feel differently for script typefaces. A script typeface like Billabong or Zapfino are supposed to look like script… like a pen on paper, like they were written by a human not typed by a machine.

So really, like handwriting, they should result in something unique. Instead,  script fonts tend to show up even more that they are a typeface. It’s natural and beautiful that the lowercase a in Helvetica is always the same. It brings clarity and calm. But having the same lowercase a in a script font, just emphasises that it is uniform… which a script wouldn’t be. In Instagram’s case the n and s should meet. The r and the a do. If you were really doing “joined up writing” you would join wherever it made sense right? In this case, its more like -In- Stag- ram (that’s two too many animal references).

Using a default script font for your logo isn’t bad- it’s just not unique.

Anyway… rant over… nearly.

Instagram used Billabong script. Now the wordmark has been redesigned - beautifully.

Mackey Saturday has designed this gorgeous logo that references and hints at the old version, but adds some singularity while keeping it looking unique.

The n joins the s, the g joins the r (yay!)

and finally the script looks like it was written, and not a typed out set of characters. I can sleep soundly at night now.

It’s a lovely, subtle but essential redesign, created from scratch and I love it. Most Instragammers will never even notice, but when I saw the new logomark on the site this morning, I let out a sigh of relief. All was calm again…

and Yes, the lowercase a’s are the same.

Mackey has offered a real treat in “showing his working out” which you can see on his portfolio site and at Dribbble.

#awesome