MailchimpCopied

Mailchimp's script logotype, last updated by Jessica Hische in 2013, and its Freddie chimp icon had a practical problem the company admitted openly: they had hierarchy issues and never appeared together. In 2018 Mailchimp was also widening from email tool to marketing platform for small businesses, and wanted to speak to a broader audience without losing its oddball personality.

Collins replaced the script with a chunky, slightly off-kilter custom wordmark, and Mailchimp dropped the capital C from its name. Freddie was simplified into a single-colour silhouette, hat and wink intact, so he can now sit beside the wordmark as one lock-up. Cavendish Yellow, described by Mailchimp as the shade of sunshine and optimism, became the lead colour, supported by bright pink and green and quieter tones. Cooper Light, based on Cooper Black, joined the type system, and illustration took cues from outsider art.

Design Week and Mailchimp's own announcement credit Collins, working with the in-house brand team, plus R/GA; co-founder and CEO Ben Chestnut called it a huge collaboration between internal and outside teams. VP of design Gene Lee framed the goal as unity: with so many creative people under one roof, parts of the experience had grown in different directions. A roster of outside illustrators drew the black-and-yellow imagery. It launched on 27 September 2018 by email to customers, with accounts largely unchanged beyond colour and illustration.

Reaction split along predictable lines. On Reddit's web design forum some welcomed a yellow brand in an ocean of blue and green; others called the illustrations shitty on purpose and said the stark yellow made a mass-market product look cheaper. Collins now points out that Intuit later bought Mailchimp for 12 billion dollars and presents the brand as part of that value; how much credit a logo deserves for an acquisition is debatable.

Creative Bloq noted that while many brands were abandoning scripts for bland sans-serifs, Mailchimp's new wordmark stayed full of character. That is the achievement: it is a script-to-sans move that did not lose the joke. The yellow did a lot of work too, quickly becoming the thing people recognise first.