Instagram created custom fonts called ‘Instagram Sans,’ and some of them are truly wild

Image: Instagram

Today is a big day for the brand refresh, which is a fancy term for making big hand-wavy statements about logos. There is a lot of that here. Can I ask you about illuminated gradients? One big change is the creation of its own typeface, called "Instagram Sans", that it plans to use in marketing and in the app itself.

The company said that the design of the glyph reflected the simplicity and craft of the service. It is inspired by the combination of squares and circles. It is a mix of perfect and hand-made with a few details, like the not quite straight terminal at the bottom. You can see the evolution of the logo in some places.

Image: Instagram

It makes sense for a brand with such a diverse set of users to use a sans-serif lettering. The company worked with Linguists to make sure the typeface works in as many languages as possible. There is a small hump in the tail of the uppercase. There's also the Sans script, which adds brushstroke-y flourishes to practically every letter and sometimes looks like the logo of a yoga studio.

The wackier fonts give a different identity to the photo sharing service. One place the company is hoping users try out is in Stories and Reels, where a caption written in Sans script is going to look nothing like a ripped TikTok video. As vertical video becomes the norm, there's a certain sameness permeating the social landscape, and while a needlessly wavy, may not change everything, it's something.

How users will feel about the new look is the real question. Meta knows better than anyone how resistant users can be to change. It's possible that the app is starting small rather than completely changing it on the first day. Don't be surprised if you see more squircles before you know it.