Discord (2021)Copied

Discord unveiled the refresh in May 2021 in a post celebrating what it called its blurpthday. The old identity had a techy wordmark that critics felt was overdue for a change, and the update aimed for more energy across the board.

The changes were small in shape and big in tone. The signature colour, branded blurple, became #5865F2, and Discord said the whole palette had been brightened to feel bolder and more playful. The mascot, which Discord confirmed had been called Clyde all along, had its edges reshaped so that, in Discord's words, the old antennas look more like shoulders, and Clyde was given a range of facial expressions, a nod to the fan art that already drew him that way. The wordmark moved to a tweaked version of the typeface Ginto.

Discord did not lead with an agency credit in its announcement, and outlets that covered the launch focused on the product team's own explanation.

The colour drew a second wave. Users on Discord's support forum and r/discordapp said the brighter blurple strained their eyes, particularly in dark mode, and some neurodivergent users said it was harder to look at. MakeUseOf summed it up with a headline asking why everyone hated the rebrand. The new Clyde, more symmetrical and simpler, was the least contested piece.

The Verge treated the logo as a footnote to bigger news: on its sixth birthday Discord was also launching discovery for Stage Channels, its Clubhouse-style audio rooms. Discord's own explanation was unusually candid. Few people knew the mascot was called Clyde; most called it a game controller, Mickey Mouse pants or simply ugly. The old mark was asymmetrical and always trapped inside a speech bubble, which made merchandise and interface work awkward, and its sharp antennas printed badly on small items like pins, so they became shoulders. Clyde was freed from the bubble and allowed facial expressions, and Blurple became brighter and more saturated, with red added to the palette.

Reception centred almost entirely on the lettering. Video Games Chronicle reported that the top reply to Discord's tweet asked users to design a better font, drawing hundreds of replies, and one of its readers put the complaint well: you can leave a techy wordmark behind without going full Fortnite. The Clyde redraw was the better idea; the type was where the playfulness tipped into cartoon.