Looking through their reasoning and explanations I can see no boost or improvement to the usefulness of the product. It's a fad and will be out-of-date rather quickly.Ģ. There is zero innovation in this re-brand, it's simply following the trend of quirky / brutal / modern flat elitism that is currently sweeping the industry.

Good design is as little design as possibleġ.

Good design is environmentally friendly.

Good design is thorough down to the last detail.

Good design makes a product understandable.

I hate to be that guy who bases design on a written list of principles, but when it works it works. There isn’t much else to speak of in terms of ‘purpose’ regarding the redesign since there doesn’t seem to be one. Why is there a desperate need to shift away from that? I get that they want to be involved in more than that but Dropbox is a cloud storage service. “A place to store your files” is literally 99% of what Dropbox does. Our new brand system shows that Dropbox isn't just a place to store your files - it's a living workspace that brings teams and ideas together. Sometimes this can be acceptable if done correctly, but this is not the case for Dropbox. Were users confused by the previous system? Is there data showing large drop-off and a lack of conversion directly connected with the design system itself? All they state is they needed a change with zero reasoning as to why.Īs I stated at the beginning of this review - it’s a redesign for the sake of a redesign.

On the marketing site promoting the new design system, the Dropbox team doesn’t mention a single problem that this branding redesign is meant to fix.

It’s good to try and understand the motive or problem that a company is trying to solve when redesigning something as fundamental as core branding, but this is where the first red flag appears for Dropbox. So without anymore fluff - let’s get into it. Not only is it uninspired and broken, but it also shows how our industry is plagued with a need to redesign things just for the sake of redesigning them. I won’t mince words when I say I believe this is a huge step backwards for their brand. If you haven’t seen the updated design yet, you can do so here: sign (Take your time, I can wait). Earlier last week the design team at Dropbox unveiled their new branding / design system for the company as a whole.

Dropbox logo redesign