Adobe quietly rebrands, tweaking its iconic logo

Adobe has a new look, but with the new brand evolving over the past couple of years, you may not have immediately noticed.

Mother Design was brought on board to "rethink and codify its brand system", sharpening up Adobe's identity and making it more adaptable and scalable. Like many of the best rebrands, the agency focused on Adobe's iconic brand elements and heritage, using previous logos as inspiration for the new identity.

Inspired by Marva Warnock's 1982 design, Mother Design used the 'A' to create a logotype that genuinely looks as if it's always been there. It has got rid of the 'A' with 'Adobe' beneath or next it and instead uses the 'A' either on its own or as part of the word 'Adobe'. This may seem like a minor change but it makes the logo seem far more modern. What was before a negative space 'A' logo has now become a "positive space expression", according to Mother Design.

"The intention behind this shift was to confidently spotlight the Adobe name, rather than require numerous mental connections between logos, wordmarks and lockups," says Mother Design on its website.

The colour palette has been tidied up, with a renewed focus on Adobe's signature red plus black and white. The red now seems bolder and more intentional, and works beautifully with a range of brand assets.

Mother Design also created what they are calling the 'Adobe lens', a red frame that houses and highlights images. This makes the use of imagery cohesive across the brand and ties everything together with one memorable device.

"To enable maximum use and flexibility, we defined various behaviours (transform, stage, focus) and states (primary, full-flood and red wash) for the lens," says Mother Design.

The Adobe Clean type family has also been evolved to a display typeface, in collaboration with Adobe's type design team and MCKL Type.

The new type is used across product lockups, making them uniform, which is important as there are so many of them (see our Adobe software list for the full run-down).

Elsewhere, the identity flows across UIs based on Spectrum, Adobe's product design framework.

The rebrand has been dropped with little fanfare, with Mother Design announcing it on Instagram earlier this week. Adobe itself doesn't seem to be talking about it.

Like the recent Amazon and Walmart rebrands, this is an example of a brand tweaking and refining its legacy brand rather than going for a complete overhaul. This seems to work particularly well when brands are viewed as trustworthy and are already well known. It also helps avoid the type of backlash that comes with a massive overhaul (we're looking at you, Jaguar).

I can imagine seeing this new brand across Adobe products for years to come.