Red Hat has a new logo, the first major update to the iconic Linux brand in almost 20 years.
The billion-dollar Linux company, which was sold to IBM for $34 bullion last year, unveiled its striking new corporate identity in a blog post ahead of the Red Hat Summit 2019.
The new design (which you can see above) is not a radical departure; I mean, it’s still literally a red hat.
And it’s finally ditched the creepy “Shadowman” guy:
Don’t get me wrong: the old Red Hat icon is iconic and is, understandably, what most of us will think of when we see the words “Red Hat”.
The problem is that the design is very much of its era. It’s like late 1990s clipart:
- Overly detailed design ✅
- Doesn’t scale well ✅
- Relies heavily on white space ✅
- Lack of caps ✅
- Varied fonts weights ✅
Still not convinced by the need for a refresh? I’ll let Red Hat’s Tim Yeaton explain with some killer context:
“The new logo reflects Red Hat’s evolution—from a scrappy upstart “sneaking” into data centers with boxed copies of a Linux-based operating system (not to mention mugs and t-shirts) to the world’s leading provider of open source solutions […].“
“We’ve truly stepped out of the shadows,” he says.
Red Hat’s New Logo & Font
Enter the new Red Hat logo:
No more creepy guy prowling around up to weird stuff! A hat that is identifiably a hat and anyone, not just creepy guys, can wear! A brighter shade of red to denote passion! A logotype that is correctly capitalised!
There’s also a pair of news fonts designed specifically for Red Hat by Jeremy Mickel of MCKL, an American design studio. The new fonts are crisper, more legible and easier to read, and are open source.
You can download the new Red Hat fonts from Github:
Thanks to its more agile design, the new logo and fonts can be arranged in all sorts of ways:
“The logo reflects Red Hat’s evolution from upstart ‘sneaking’ into data centres to leading provider of open source…”
Tim Yeaton
Red Hat’s new logo has a softer vibe to it, one more in keeping with its modern persona, and more effective at communicating the softer sides of the brand.
Yeaton says he wants people who’ve never even heard of Red Hat to see the new logo and instantly get a sense for what the company stands for, i..e dynamic, trustworthy, innovative, open…
And you know what? I think they absolutely succeeded in communicating that with the new logo.
If you have a spare weekend and want to learn more about how the new design came about there’s a seriously in-depth (if admittedly insightful) post blog post available.
The post details how Red Hat went about creating its new logo, first proposed back in 2017, using an “open design” approach.
If you’re wondering what this has to do with Ubuntu then …Well, you got me. Technically this has nothing to do with Ubuntu other than Red Hat is a competitor, RHEL a rival to Ubuntu, and besides: Ubuntu isn’t a floating island but a country in a continent called Linux.