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In March 2013 Spotify, then a fast-growing subscription streaming service pushing into new countries, quietly replaced the logo it had used since 2006. The Verge first spotted the new mark in television ads that week, then across the website, and the company said it would eventually replace the old one in every product. A spokesperson explained the goal simply: to present the logo and name in a cleaner way. The Verge read the change as a company with less bounce and more gravity, taking itself more seriously as it tried to reach a wider audience.

Gizmodo got the story from inside. The work grew out of a brand strategy project begun the previous September, which concluded that Spotify needed a refresh. By a December event the team had already moved toward photographic imagery rather than quirky illustration and dropped the green square, and in January it began what it called blue sky work on the logo itself. The creative lead, who had drawn the original logo in 2006, said Spotify wanted to be seen as easy, personal and fun. He also named a practical problem: the old logo came in pieces, and people were using the app icon as the logo because they did not know which was primary.

The visual change is a move from hand-drawn to geometric. The bubbly lettering gave way to a medium weight of Tobias Frere-Jones's Gotham, tweaked with rounded corners and a circular dot on the i instead of a square one; the website used Proxima Nova. The lead designer said the team shortlisted about ten geometric sans serifs, because rounded and friendly was the Spotify look, and that round felt more human, like the previous hand-drawn work. The three waves, which the team said have always meant streaming rather than sound, moved into a green circle beside the name. The designers admitted people had complained online that the waves were not perfect; they had tried the golden ratio, found it looked even stranger, and kept a slightly organic version for personality.

Reaction was mixed. Gizmodo noted a wave of angry tweets and even a parody account, and its own writer praised the typeface but called the squiggles awkward.

Seen now, this was the moment Spotify stopped looking like a Swedish start-up and started looking like a platform. The single lockup fixed a real problem, and the circle gave the brand an icon that could sit on any screen. The imperfect waves were a strange hill to defend, but they kept a trace of the original hand. The green circle was the right foundation.