I received, yet another Uber’s rebranding email this week and it made me peep into the matter.
Uber is a technology company which provides cab service on the go from mobile app. It was established in 2009 as ‘UberCab’ and have ever since evolved its brand name and the logo design of the name. It’s interesting to notice how over the time, getting influence by the evolving technology and the way we use it had changed the design of the Uber logo. Let’s me take you all in a deeper dive of logo transition from 2009 till date.
2010
2010: Uber launches in San Francisco as UberCab. This was its initial logo. At the time, it cost about 1.5 times as much as a cab, but you could request a car in San Francisco by sending a text or pressing a button. Logo had ‘U’ & ‘C’ which seemed as if ‘U’ was rotated 90 degrees right side to make it a C, Logo seemed symmetric and was red in colour whereas the brand name as in black.
2010
Uber dropped ‘cab’ from the name as it would have become a bigger name to think of ‘cab’ assumed word with Uber. This attempt to make the logo cleaner and shorter lasted longer in fact is still alive. Type face, size and colour of the text still remained same. This is the time when company came up with the tag like “Everyone’s Private Driver”
2012
2012: It took another two years for Uber to come up with totally new logo and brad name style. This is complete artistic and technological makeover of the company. Uber plunged into smartphones and sleeker interface. In this logo design designer came up with unique “U” more of slab-serif way. Typeface of letter have slight curvy edge and used custom made curves and edges. This logo lasted the longest with the brand. Still the website remained the same. Uber focused on making overall design (website as well logo and app) more on black and white colour scheme to make it bolder and legible.
2016
2016: The big logo redesign, ditching any semblance of intimidation. Larger logo for mobile appeared out of nowhere leaving least resemblance to previous logos or the company name. Interesting part here is the grid structure they introduces in background. Keeping the colours in contrast still White Darkest blue and lighter blue grid lines. Grid here represented the connect world via road where Uber makes it possible.
2016
Along with the logo name’s also been redesigned Feb 2016. Giving the typeface human touch. Curvy end-points of ‘U’ & ‘R’ extending out of letter block space were to make it simpler in turn gives it a Sans-Serif look now. Edges of the letter are rounded smoother touch to letters. Arms of ‘E’ we cut sliced slant way and reason is still not clear. Finally typeface was made bolder to make it more readable. Tracked closer, much closer than it was. This attempt to make the typeface more humane is indeed successful.
2012 to 2016
Anticipating more changes and humane touch to the branding of the company.
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