Pentagram creates "inherently eclectic" visual identity for Reddit

Design studio Pentagram has rebranded social media platform Reddit, including rendering the brand's alien mascot, Snoo, in 3D.

Pentgram's New York office sought to create brand materials that captured the website's "utopian ethos", refreshing the logo, mascot and typefaces, as well as the presentation of conversation threads.

One major goal of the rebrand was organizing and unifying Reddit's various visual elements, which have grown organically over time.

"A utopian ethos runs throughout the brand, seen in the ways that both its employees and community contribute to the company's visual identity," said Pentagram.

"Snoo, Reddit's beloved mascot, had been adapted into thousands of iterations. The company's unique terminology, such as 'r/' for subreddits and upvote-downvote mechanisms, contributed to the complexity."

The studio focused the rebrand around four traits it felt define the platform – "inherently eclectic, positively different, delightfully absurd and genuinely candid".

Pentagram brought Snoo into "its next act" by rendering the character in 3D and creating a variety of emojis with different facial expressions.

The alien mascot is a small white figure with a round belly, bear-like ears, orange eyes, one antenna and an open smile. Its 3D evolution features matte skin.

To consolidate the varied styles that comprise Reddit's conversation threads, Pentagram created colourful bubbles that wrap around conversation titles, tags and other elements to create a common visual thread throughout the website.

"Beyond typography, the bubble became a key element of the compositional strategy," said Pentagram.

"Engineered as a dynamic content device, the bubble adeptly frames both text and images, acting as a foundational graphic element."

An animated language was also created for the bubbles, which move and stretch to reveal "subreddits" – its conversation threads –and other visual elements on the platform.

For the website's typeface, the studio created Reddit Display, which contains rounded lowercase letters with a small conversation bubble tucked within their bowls, or circular elements.

The studio also streamlined Reddit's colour palette, which previously contained over 100 different colours, into fifteen bright, bold hues featuring a magenta, an orange, and a neon green.

"Reddit has a distinctly genuine sensibility to it, expressed in the forms of unique features on the platform and an alien mascot," said Pentagram.

"The strategic integration of these key refinements – the evolved form and expression of Snoo, the introduction of the bubble, the creation of Reddit Display, codified motion behaviours, and a streamlined colour palette – collectively reflects Reddit’s unique brand attributes and empowers the company to confidently navigate its next chapter."

Pentagram recently worked with child refugees to create a flashlight kit and created a new visual identity for The Moholy-Nagy Foundation.

The images are courtesy Pentagram.

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