What it had to solve
Pentagram New York, led by partner Natasha Jen, was approached late in 2022 to unify disparate visuals while keeping Reddit's 'creative spirit'. It named four traits: inherently eclectic, positively different, delightfully absurd, genuinely candid.
The idea
Make the speech bubble the brand's cornerstone: hidden in the typeface letters, wrapped around content and animated like sliding drawers.
How it works
Pentagram created the Reddit Sans family (Sans, Mono, Display, Condensed) with rounded counters that read as speech bubbles, and a bubble graphic device that frames titles, tags and images and stretches in motion. Snoo became 3D with opposable thumbs and a set of emoji faces. The palette went from 100+ shades to 15: five hues in three shades each.
What it did
Design Week calls it one of the site's most holistic overhauls. Snoo files were released in a Blender-compatible format and the fonts are open-source and free online. No usage results are reported.
Background
Pentagram New York, led by Natasha Jen, rebranded Reddit after the company said global growth required cohesion across assets built up over years. In strategy, Pentagram named four traits (inherently eclectic, positively different, delightfully absurd, genuinely candid) and described Reddit as 'the heart of the internet'.
The bubble is the core device. Reddit Sans has rounded lowercase counters that take the shape of a speech bubble, Reddit Display exaggerates it, and a graphic bubble frames text and images and moves like sliding drawers and doors. The palette went from more than 100 shades to 15.
Snoo, the alien mascot present since 2005, went 3D for the first time, with opposable thumbs and a menu of emoji-like expressions. Design Week reports Reddit published the designs in a format compatible with Blender, so users can 'write Snoo's story together', and released its fonts open-source.
Why it lands
Years of ad hoc changes, including Snoo reissued in thousands of versions, had left the brand inconsistent.
Open-sourcing Snoo and the type fits a community-built platform.
A bubble used in type, layout and motion makes the system recognisable without the logo.
What you can take
Find the one shape your product already means and build type, layout and motion from it.
Since then
Design Week traces Snoo through earlier guideline versions in 2018 and 2020; the Pentagram work was the first holistic system after those.
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