Deezer (2023)Copied

Deezer, founded in Paris in 2007 and available in more than 180 countries, unveiled a new identity on 7 November 2023 at an event at La Gaîté Lyrique. The company said it was reinventing itself as a platform for music experiences, built on expression and connection, and wanted to recharge people's emotional connection to the brand. Its chief executive said the company had been transformed over two years.

Design Week reported that, despite strong brand equity, Deezer wanted substantial change and to re-examine its core purpose. The design team set out to align the brand with the strategy 'Deezer helps you be and belong', create a cohesive story across identity and product, and claim a distinct colour. That colour is Deezer Purple, which the creative director hoped could become as associated with Deezer as red is with Netflix and green with Spotify.

The new logo is a heart, meant to express love of music and belonging, which pulses in motion in two states: one moving to a human rhythm, the other dancing to the beat. Its shapes recur as patterns and graphic frames that hold imagery and signal genres. A variable typeface, Deezer Sans, was drawn with an independent type foundry, with condensed cuts for longer content and extended ones for punchy lines; the wordmark is derived from it with customised letters. Art direction centres artists in frame and uses high-contrast flash photography with a subtle fisheye effect. Deezer's marketing chief said the refresh let it tell its story more emotionally under the line 'Live the music'.

The rebrand arrived alongside an updated app.

Deezer's own announcement framed the identity as the visible end of two years of change, with the company recasting itself as a platform for music experiences built on expression and connection. Chief executive Jeronimo Folgueira spoke of a key milestone, and chief marketing officer Maria Garrido called the refresh a chance to tell the company's story in a more emotional way. The release described the new personality as bold, fresh and quirky. Companies rarely call themselves quirky and mean it, but a pulsing purple heart at least commits to emotion more fully than an equaliser ever could.

A heart for a music service is the most obvious idea on the board, and purple is the last unclaimed colour in streaming rather than a strategy. But the motion is genuinely good, and the flash-and-fisheye photography has an energy Deezer never had before. It is a louder brand, if not a cleverer one.