Patreon (2017)Copied

Patreon launched in 2013 as a way for fans to pay creators monthly. By mid-2017 it had 50,000 active creators and a million patrons paying an average of 12 dollars a month, and it was on track to pay out 150 million dollars that year. Chief executive Jack Conte wanted it to feel, as he told The Verge, like a place to run a business, make money and run a membership platform.

The rebrand arrived on 14 June 2017 as part of what Patreon called the Membership Engine, after a year of work. It bundled a Patron Relationship Manager, which TechCrunch described as the first CRM for creators, early-access posts, livestreaming through Crowdcast and Lens, a Stories-style app for paying fans. Alongside new tools came new app designs and a new logo, plus high-profile signings such as McSweeney's Internet Tendency and Bill Burr. Conte's announcement on the creator forum promised a reimagined Patreon that made it easy to get paid.

The logo was part of that shift. Patreon's original 'P' had been made on 99designs four years earlier, and a Patreon staff member told creators on the community forum that, as the company grew into a more professional business focused on getting creators paid, it needed to distance itself from a look tied to old messaging. Brand guidelines and new logo files were published the same day.

Creators were not all convinced. On the same forum thread, one complained that the new mark was unrecognisable, that abstract shapes did not communicate, and that it had arrived just after they had printed new signage carrying the old logo. The staff reply apologised, explained the secrecy, and admitted she had not liked the new logo at first either. Design Pieces said the rebrand took logo simplification to the extreme, and a Reddit user answered with deliberately absurd minimalist versions of Apple, McDonald's, Nike and others.

The mockery was fair, yet the strategy was sound. Moving from a crowdfunding curiosity to a business tool justified dropping a crowdsourced logo. But replacing a recognisable letter with an abstraction that even its own staff needed time to warm to cost Patreon equity its creators had been promoting for free.