Recently, Netflix has been making waves in many online design forums as they have subtly started to change their long-standing iconic logo. The original Netflix logo used white letters shadowed in black against a red backdrop. The letters of the logo were all in caps and they were arranged in an arc as to mimic a vintage movie poster style as well as the ever-popular Hollywood sign in the hills of LA. The changes to the new Netflix logo are subtle but huge at the same time. Netflix has done away with its iconic red background. Now, the letters of the logo appear in red on a white background and they have a flatter, cleaner look. The new red letters are still all in cap and they have the same arced design as the original Netflix logo design of the 90s.
New Netflix logo 2014
For those of you that don’t know, Netflix is a California-based company that has revolutionized how we watch home movies. Emerging in 1997, Netflix was the first company to offer a mail-order movie service. Brilliant! Quickly growing in popularity and soon competing with other huge home rental movie companies like Blockbuster, Netflix’s revolutionary idea took hold and grew throughout the USA and Canada. Do you remember getting their iconic red envelopes in the mail? I used to love how much they stood out amongst my other pieces of mail and how I could quickly riffle through my mail and find my next movie delights. Sometime in the 2000s, Netflix took a giant lead forward and they introduced their movie streaming service. This opened up Netflix to the world market and today, they have over 10 million subscribers worldwide.
Netflix mail order movies of the 90s and early 2000s.
So, why such an uproar? Isn’t it normal for such a large corporate company to update its logo after 20 years?
Yes, most companies do update their logos but what makes the Netflix change so different is that, as of yet, Netflix has refused to comment which has added to the mystery and mystic behind their new logo design. Usually, large companies roll out their new logos with such flurry that it is rare for it to go unnoticed. An announcement such as this is a great opportunity for free advertising and to get your company talked about in the news. But Netflix is remaining hush-hush and it has left a lot of people asking why.
Many people speculate that Netflix decided to update their logo because in the coming years, they will be moving into more television series and as such, they needed a new logo to fit this new format. As most of us has probably already experienced, the old Netflix logo is really hard to read and illegible on our computers, tablets or other screens. It is often too bright or too small making it extremely difficult to read. If you think about it, Netflix needs a new logo that will look good at scaled down on the bottom of a TV screen like other television network logos such as NBC, CNN or ABC. Also, a logo with a white background instead of a red background will pop-out much more in their magazine advertising.
Other people are saying that Netflix is keeping their new logo a secret as an advertising ploy on its own (in which case, it is working) or because they do not what to experience any negative press because of their logo change in the same way as some other huge corporate companies have in the past (think of the public outcry when the GAP released their new logo a few years ago).
What do you think? If you don’t know that much about logo design and you would like to learn more about what types of logos are out there and available on the market, visit the Pixellogo.com website and browse through their massive logo design collection.