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Facebook Primps Its Logo With Mobile In Mind

This article is more than 8 years old.

Facebook, on Tuesday, altered its main logo for the first time in a decade. But you might have trouble seeing the difference.

Facebook updated the typeface of its wordmark to make it sleeker and thinner, with more white space between each letter. The new logo also uses a singe-story "a," while the old logo uses a double-story one. The social media giant said the change is intended to freshen up the logo and make it easier to read on mobile devices, which often have poorer resolution than desktop computers. Facebook said its initial logo was designed with square typeface for viewing on desktop. But now, nearly 90% of Facebook's 1.44 billion users access the social network from their phones.

"When Facebook's logo was first created in 2005, the company was just getting started and we wanted the logo to feel grown up and to be taken seriously," Facebook creative director Josh Higgins said in a statement. "Now that we are established, we set out to modernize the logo to make it feel more friendly and approachable. While we explored many directions, ultimately we decided that we only needed an update, and not a full redesign."

The logo change will be reflected on signage at Facebook's offices, as well as on other Facebook products and services such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus. The icon in the upper left corner of Facebook website links, known as a favicon, has not changed. Facebook worked with Eric Olson, whose Klavika typeface was used in the original logo, to make the new custom font, the company said.

The tweak is small, but is one of the many changes Facebook has made recently to cater to mobile users. In June, the company launched a stripped-down version of its Android app. The app, 'Facebook Lite,' uses much less data than the original version in a push to attract more users in emerging markets, where users’ data plans are typically more limited and networks can lack the bandwidth to support the features of the main app.

Mobile makes up a growing portion of Facebook's ad revenue. In Q1, mobile ads made up 73% of the company's advertising revenue, up from 59% a year earlier. Last year, Facebook boosted its share of U.S. mobile advertising to 18.5% to $19.2 billion, up from a share of 14.4% in 2013, according eMarketer.

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