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This brand refresh is part of Dropbox’s efforts to move the brand away from the image of being a storage place, to a working platform where people can work together in an organized space. This includes the launch of new tools such as “Dropbox Smart Sync” to access every folder and file right from your desktop without taking up all your hard drive space, “Dropbox Paper” to collaborate with teams and work seamlessly with all types of content in a single document, and a “Dropbox Showcase” to share your work with clients and partners with customized layouts and branding.
The new look is built on the concept of the creative energy and it is inspired by the creative work of Dropbox customers. It wants to show with contrasting and vibrant colors, a versatile typeface, and playful illustrations and imagery that extraordinary things happen when diverse minds come together. In other words, I feel that they realized that Dropbox users are mainly creative people with large files (you know, Adobe, CAD, .RAW…) so they had to target this audience with images that can be relatable to them.
The new logo is built by a glyph and wordmark, and even though it might look like an insignificant change of color and typography, it has a deeper meaning. Continuing with objective of pushing Dropbox further than a place to store stuff, the new glyph is a revised version of the famous blue box, with the difference that now it is not a simple box anymore, it is a collection of surfaces that aims to show that Dropbox is an open platform and a place for creation.
Honestly, before this redesign, I’ve never realized that its icon was literally a box with angles that simulated depth, but now that I compare it with this new one that is symmetric and simple, I really see a big change for good. And even though it is hard to not see a box, because even the name has the word in it, the animation helps to visualize what they want to transmit. I am glad that they didn’t create a whole new icon because we all recognize it in our tabs, but I gotta say that the different spacing of the bottom “surface” is making me a little crazy because that is what accentuates the box image.
Another thing that makes me happy, is that they didn’t go with the flow and fall in the scary trend of geometric typefaces. The new wordmark features a black color that lets the blue icon shine and uses the Sharp Grotesk typeface, which is also the brand’s new font family used across all channels, from Dropbox’s products to advertising campaigns.
With 21 widths and 7 weights, Sharp Grotesk allows the brand to have lots of versatility when they need different tones (you can go to this link an resize your browser to see how it changes), something that we all have to keep in mind when designing visual identities, you don’t want to have a single-weight font from DaFont all over the place.
Moving on to bigger changes, Dropbox is going the Spotify way with a bigger color palette and a system that juxtaposes colors in pairs. This variety of combinations are applied everywhere, even in the logo, and it goes from the signature blue over white, to purple over yellow. This color extravaganza, just like the typography, allows the brand to have different moods, it can go provocative in marketing campaigns, but also serious and clean in the product.
“Our new system lets us pick the right amount of expressiveness for the situation… Colour can go from a standard Dropbox blue to ‘whoa’.”
– Dropbox
And as you might be thinking, I do have some things to say about this system. First, we have the icon that changes colors like a neon light on the streets. Maybe it is because of the weird color combinations that are not really contrasting, but this is definitely not working; it doesn’t look fun nor funky, it just looks bad. I am not saying that the color palette sucks, I really like it in the advertising materials and in the typography over color blocks, there it works, but when the color combinations are used in the logo it just loses its strength and vanishes in the background.
I do appreciate that they created a system that changes between the product and the campaigns. However, this system is just too radical, it creates a disconnection between what I see outside on a billboard and with what I see in the product, it looks like two different worlds and it even looks that the new visual look of the brand is not being applied to the main product, and it is just like the icing on the cake. I believe that they need to bring some color in a very subtle way to the platform to really see this connection.
And finally, one of my favorite parts of this new look: the imagery. Remember what I said at the beginning that they wanted to show what happens when different minds come together? Well, this is what happens. Dropbox has been working with multiple artists making this collages and images to bring alive this metaphor of co-creation. And the only thing that I can say is that I am feeling it! This shows exactly what they want to transmit with a really nice set of images that fit perfectly between them; it looks customized, sharp and well-thought, and not just like images forced to be together.
Besides these collages, Dropbox is also launching new illustrations to bring some joy to the platform, just like they have done since they started 10 years ago. The new illustrations are inspired by the early stages of an idea and were created using graphite and paired with abstract patterns and shapes.
Both illustrations and collages are really well done, we cannot say that they aren’t inspiring nor joyful, but unfortunately, they are giving the same problem that the difference of colors between the product and the campaign was giving me. There is no connection between them, I see a very experimental and artistic campaign, but when I log in what I see it’s a cute hand-drawed giraffe jumping around, and I know that this is a campaign and will suddenly change, but if this is a campaign and redesign that were supposed to define the new Dropbox, maybe they should have brought the whole collage concept to the product imagery, or vice-versa.
Overall, this new look is bringing new vibes and a different perception of Dropbox. On one side, the new logo, typography variety, and imagery are a great improvement; on the other side, the color palette system needs a revision to find a balance between the color contrasts, and there is also a need to make a connection between what is outside (campaign) and what is inside (product) to have a cohesive and stronger identity.
But well… at least this is my F opinion