Max (formerly HBO Max)Copied

Warner Bros. Discovery merged HBO Max and discovery+ into one service and launched it in the US on 23 May 2023 as Max. JB Perrette, who ran global streaming, said the brand signalled a change from two narrower products to a broader offer for everybody. HBO's Casey Bloys argued that HBO was a premium brand not designed to carry reality, food and home shows, and Perrette added that HBO would be privileged in the product rather than pushed to breaking point.

The identity came from a year-long collaboration with London studio DixonBaxi under the idea Where our world meets yours. The lowercase wordmark combines the bullseye from HBO's o with the curves of the Warner Bros. shield; design director Karun Agimal said lowercase was chosen to balance confidence with warmth. The bullseye inside the a became The Spotlight, a deliberately discreet graphic device for posters, trailers and the app. Max Sans, drawn with the foundry F37, stretches from cinematic to loud. Purple, strongly tied to HBO Max, gave way to a vibrant blue drawn from classic Warner Bros. blue, with the gradient kept and accent colours added. Zelig made a sonic logo of three heartbeat-like beats, and the studio redrew the Max Original and HBO Original marks.

The reaction to the name drowned out the design. Creative Bloq said the rebrand was getting roasted, with users mourning the loss of the HBO name and mocking the tagline. In Fast Company, Debbie Millman called it the brand mistake of the decade, though the experts it asked were not unanimous. Vulture wrote a eulogy for HBO Max purple, calling Max blue just another streaming blue.

The name did not last. In May 2025 Warner Bros. Discovery announced it was bringing HBO back, arguing that no brand had stood for quality storytelling as consistently as HBO, and in July 2025 the service became HBO Max again, ending the Max era after about two years.

The craft is good: the bullseye a is a neat piece of inheritance and the system is clean and legible. But identity work cannot fix a strategy that throws away the most valuable name in television, and choosing the same blue as half the market made the loss more visible, not less.