Top 10 Social Media Logos: The Story Behind Them – 2023

Top 10 Social Media Logos and the Story Behind Them

Social Media Marketing 101 | Martec…

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Social Media Marketing 101 | Martech Zone

Social media has become an integral part of modern-day living.

It has helped us connect with people in ways we had never imagined.

Social media sites have also evolved from personal to a tool businesses can use for advertising purposes.

Social media has become an active marketing platform.

With the extensive use of social media through mobile devices, it has become essential for companies to optimise all their content for smaller devices.

The optimisation includes ensuring that graphics are recognisable even when they are shrunk to fit on small screens.

Optimising the company’s logo is essential since it represents its entirety.

Coincidentally, social media sites also have some of the best logos around, as we can recognise them immediately, even if they are at their smallest.

The minds behind the latest social media logos have done their job so well that these symbols can serve as prime examples of how companies should create their designs.

You can even find Free templates online where you can download social media icons or edit them in all formats.

Why Having a Good Logo is Important?

It’s not rocket science that having a professional logo is integral to any organisation.

A logo represents the organisation, and the elements of a social media logo usually carry symbolic representations of the company’s mission, values, and even beliefs.

A logo provides a unique personality to any organisation, helping it be distinguishable from all others.

A great logo is also a great marketing tool.

It can help achieve the following:

Differentiate your brand from the competition

A logo design‘s primary purpose is to help distinguish your brand from the competition.

Having a logo is the best way to do that.

However, while this is very superficial, your logo carries your brand’s reputation.

The audience usually associates your logo with the quality of the product and service you provide.

If your brand performs well, your logo will differentiate you from the rest.

Connect with your audience

A good logo can naturally draw the attention of your audience.

When a logo is attractive enough, it can help drive traffic towards your brand, converting them into sales.

However, if your logo is hardly attractive, you will find it challenging to grab the attention of your target audience.

It is imperative to harness all creativity in crafting your social media logos.

Improve brand loyalty

Finally, your logo can be an avenue where your customers can show their loyalty.

Customers delighted with your products and services would be proud to be associated with your brand and willing to carry it with them.

For example, clothing brands benefit from branding since people would show off the brand they are using if the brand is known to be great.

People who would see the brand would then be intrigued, driving more interest towards your brand.

Again, social media icons themselves have some of the best brand logos out there.

You can check how they arrived at their logos and how this knowledge can help you create or recreate your logo into a great one.

Here are 10 of the best social media logos and the stories that lie behind them:

What started as a website intended for Harvard students has become a platform that connects 2.89 billion active users across the globe.

Facebook’s logo is simple: a lowercase name on white text on a blue background.

The simple design represents simplicity, like Facebook as an organisation and a service.

Another interesting take is that Mark Zuckerburg has a visual condition called deuteranopia, where one has difficulty distinguishing between colours, but blue is an exception.

Despite the numerous changes in Facebook, its logos have remained relatively stable.

There are just minor, almost unrecognisable, changes in the logo.

They would want to maintain the logo’s simplicity and ease of recognition.

2 – WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a messaging app that connects users with the Internet instead of a local network service used for texts and calls.

As an app geared toward communication, it has a logo design that features a white phone on a green dialogue cloud.

It is a straightforward design that best represents what function it stands for while very common.

3 – Tumblr

Tumblr is a social networking site that centralises microblogging or short-form blogging.

Tumblr’s logo is also straightforward, its lowercase name on a simple white, Bold Bookman Old Style typeface set against a dark blue background.

Because it is straightforward, Tumblr’s logo is one of the most recognised brands.

4 – Instagram

Instagram is a sharing platform for photos and videos founded by Kevin Sytrom and Mike Krieger.

Facebook acquired Instagram several years ago.

It was initially known for its older Instagram logo, a retro cream and brown camera with the word “Insta”, and a rainbow stripe, a look that featured a Polaroid camera.

In 2016, it changed its logo to an outline of a camera set on a gradient background of purple, magenta, and orange.

While the logo change happened four years after its acquisition, it is said to reflect the app’s developments.

Despite the change, the central feature of the Instagram logo is still a camera, the brand’s main symbolisation, being a photo and video platform.

Twitter is labelled as a news and social networking service, where its 206 million active users can share short posts called tweets.

Tweets were once limited to 140 characters, but the limit has increased since 2017.

Twitter has a long log of logo changes.

The original design co-founded by Noah Glass is green and, unfortunately, appealed as rather snotty.

Glass defended that the original Twitter logo was an attempt to make the logo youthful.

Their social media logos were changed before its 2006 launch, this time by graphic designer Linda Gavin.

Gavin was given just a day to develop a new logo, and they used this logo until 2010.

The logo is a simple lowercase name of the brand that helps make it easily recognisable.

In 2010, they launched the iconic Larry the Bird logo, which stood proudly until 2012.

A modified bird logo was launched in 2012, now called simply the Twitter Bird.

The logo is a great way to represent the social networking site.

6 – Skype

Skype is another communications software that utilises the Internet to connect its users.

It was released in 2003 and is among the pioneers of Internet phone services.

It has been around for a long time and has a history of logo changes.

The earliest version of the Skype logo is a yellow dialogue cloud.

It has slowly transformed into a white letter S set on a blue background shaped in a cloud-like series of circles.

The logo is straightforward, helping it be recognised even on small thumbnails. You can easily distinguish Skype’s logo in its brand guidelines.

7 – Pinterest

Pinterest is a social networking site that primarily uses images to share ideas and information and has as many as 250 million active users.

Pinterest has a simple logo, with a white stylized letter P on a red circle and a red stylized “Pinterest” below it.

It was modified by having a more formal typeface for the word “Pinterest”, which is now on the right of the white letter P on the red circle.

It is straightforward, making the logo quickly recognised without the text.

8 – Snapchat

Snapchat is a multimedia messaging service initially released in 2011.

One of its central features is its time limit for the accessibility of posts.

The service was initially called Picaboo, and its logo was a ghost.

Snapchat retained the ghost shape but removed its face.

The ghost has a thick, black outline against a yellow square with rounded corners.

The yellow colour is believed to have helped the logo become recognisable because, aside from the unique choice of shape, the colour is also striking enough to be remembered.

9 – LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional networking site dubbed “Facebook for Professionals.”

It connects professionals and also functions as a recruitment posting site.

LinkedIn has a straightforward logo: a black “Linked” and a white “in” set on a blue square.

The shorter version of the logo retains just the “in” part.

Regardless, the logo is among the most recognisable as it is very straightforward.

10 – Youtube

Finally, we have Youtube, a video-sharing platform founded in 2005.

Their official Youtube logo also changed in 2017.

Formerly, the logo was a black “You” and then a white “Tube” set against a red rectangle with rounded edges.

The rectangle has been placed before “You” and now encases a play button, while “Tube” is black like the rest of the name.

The shorter version of the Youtube logo retains the play button on the rectangle, greatly symbolising how YouTube is all about videos.

What are the key takeaways from these Social Media Logos?

One thing that is very common among the designs of the above social media logos is how simple they are.

The key is to have your logo easily recognisable as an app icon.

Make sure that people can associate your name or a with your brand guidelines.

Where possible, you should be able to come up with a shorter version of your logo that can stand on its own while retaining its meaning.

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