KickstarterCopied

By its tenth anniversary in 2017 Kickstarter had funded more than 135,000 projects, with 14 million backers and $3.4 billion raised. The identity still felt like the scrappy start-up of 2009. New York studio Order, which had funded its own Standards Manual reissues on Kickstarter, worked with the company's in-house team to update it.

An Order partner told Design Week the old identity had a childish feel, partly because its wordmark shared a typeface with Dunkin' Donuts, and that crowdfunding had matured. The other aim was distance from rivals: Order described Indiegogo as bland and corporate and GoFundMe's logo as a high-school art project gone wrong.

The K mark became bulkier, and the rounded wordmark was redrawn with type designer Jesse Ragan of XYZ Type. Maison became the primary typeface, with the serif Cooper Light alongside, a deliberate refusal of the tech habit of a plain sans next to an icon; Kickstarter, Order argued, was not really a tech company. The bright RGB green gave way to a darker jade, with black and a lighter green as secondaries. Order also designed an identity for Drip, Kickstarter's newly acquired subscription platform, using an upside-down i as a drip, and wrote guidelines so the in-house team could roll the system out company-wide.

Reaction was quiet. The one comment under Design Week's story dismissed it as more of the ubiquitous kindergarten design.

Creative Bloq saw it as a move against the tide. Where Dropbox and eBay had reached for loud palettes, Kickstarter launched a single colour, puffed up wordmark and a pared back site, the bubble lettering inflated as far as legibility allowed. The old black and green merged into a dusky teal that read as serious, which the magazine thought sensible for a platform handling other people's money, especially with a font that bouncy. Designers on Twitter were less forgiving, calling it a downgrade and a disaster. It's Nice That added the brief's own summary: a haircut, not a makeover.

That critic has half a point: rounded letters are still rounded letters. But the move to jade and the Cooper serif do real work, shifting Kickstarter from playground to patron without losing its friendliness. It is one of the better examples of a brand growing up without turning corporate.