Uber logo and the Bauhaus movement | When branding challenges abstraction

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My friend and co-worker stopped by my office to ask me what I thought of the new Uber logo. I liked it immediately for several reasons. First, it intrigued me, as it looked like a quilt pattern. But then I took a few more beats and realized Uber’s communicating how they bring order through the chaos of coordinating people to cars on difficult maps and daunting streets. While I thought the choice of going with a lighter tint for the strokes was a brave choice, it still works. Then I saw the app’s initial animation, it reinforces what I suspect: We are part of a moving, vibrant, network coming together, and Uber helps us do that.

Not everyone agrees. My friend found it off-putting, as he had been used to the old U icon. Plus, he was certain that other people are not as high-minded as I am. I told him that didn’t matter. Whether one is a high-minded designer or not if you can open the app and still get to where you need to go, over time you’ll learn to live with it. You might even get it.

The new Uber branding is so hated, the art director reportedly stepped down. How did we get here?

Brief history of Bauhaus

Founder Walter Gropius, and instructors  Johannes Itten and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy started the school of Bauhaus in post-WWI Weimar, Germany as a response to applied arts merging with industrial arts. In A History of Graphic Design, Philip B. Meggs writes:

…for Gropius believed that only the most brilliant ideas were good enough to justify multiplication by industry…

Gropius was deeply interested in architecture’s symbolic potential and the possibility of a universal design style as an integrated aspect of society.

At some point Gropius became concerned with Itten’s more religious leanings, and the two more or less parted ways:

Gropius began to consider Itten’s mysticism to be an ‘otherworldliness’ inconsistent with an emerging concern for an objective design language capable of overcoming the dangers of past styles and personal tastes

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Imma keep it 100%. Not everything Bauhaus is dull, but everything dull is often attributed to Bauhaus.

The ideas of Bauhaus — an abstract design that responds to new industries — is relevant now, and in the Uber logo. But in an attempt to determine what is universal, spiritual, and otherworldly, a handful of people from Western Europe over a century ago did not consider the cognitive dissonance between their ideals for objectivity and their limited reality.

Imma keep it 100%. Not everything Bauhaus is dull, but everything dull is often attributed to Bauhaus. When these ideas were developed, they were happening as a response to developing Western industries in the 1920s. Cut to the 21st century, and Bauhaus continues to be a source of inspiration. Yet some fail to integrate it into modern industries. And sadly, everyone executes Bauhaus so consistently, that our work becomes monotonous. It’s not that Bauhaus doesn’t embrace color or detail, but it’s often applied in a very austere way. Everyone follows suit, never asking if austerity could be challenged. What we’re left with is dishonest, emotionally remote,  and very European sensibilities.

 Color and detail in Eastern cultures

A look at Uber’s fuller system, colors, and landscapes from China, India, and Ireland were very important in their decision-making process. Even kitchen tiles were a point of inspiration. Eastern influences on Uber’s logo points to another part of our work: Our place in the global economy. Design’s place in the global economy talks about sustainable design or design for a social purpose. But what about graphic design that considers other cultures besides our own?  In a global economy, Uber’s kind of cultural awareness is beneficial. It’s affirming to a culture when a logo reflects ornamentation as beautiful, not something distracting and fussy.

The Inside Story of Uber’s Radical Rebranding

Yet when someone reorients ideals of commonality, universality, and spirituality to cultures outside the Western world, we in the larger design community don’t know what to do with ourselves. Instead, we are dismissive of the design team’s sources of inspiration, attempt to de-intellectualize the critique, or insultingly imply their designer’s in-house status makes them less qualified to design for their own company. Bauhaus was formed under the spirituality of Catholicism. Imagine what a “spiritual” experience to design means to someone who is Hindu or Buddhist. What does abstract thinking mean then? Is it still universal, or can you connect with it, despite not being from your culture? Those are the ongoing questions many designers of the Western world must answer if they are going to make sense of the new Uber logo, or the modern world they live in.

There’s also something very honest in their branding. Simply putting English-language letters U or U-B-E-R on a rounded square in black and white quickly solves an execution problem, but it doesn’t necessarily solve a contemporary communications problem. Remember, those lines in the new logo represent a moving network. Those letters in the older versions don’t tell me what you do, or what makes you distinctive.

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In a global economy, that kind of cultural awareness is beneficial. It's affirming to a culture when a logo reflects ornamentation as beautiful, not something distracting and fussy.

A few weeks later, I stopped by my friend’s office to tell him that I planned on writing this piece after our discussion of the logo. He said that while he didn’t like it at first, he understood it more once I explained it to him. I think we as professionals who help clients build brand identity over time have a responsibility to introduce logo updates as a part of the experience. Too often we assume that the best logos don’t need explanation. But the internet doesn’t allow for one-way conversations anymore, and that includes graphic designers. We need to develop our writing and presentation skills to include the public at large. We need to develop greater empathy about the anxiety some have about change and explain why change sometimes is a good thing. But we also need to cultivate sensibilities that do not pick out Eastern influences when we are illustrating something primitive or otherworldly, nor orient modern design solutions to whiteness or Western European culture.

Images courtesy of Uber