# Unsplash new logo (2018)

> Unsplash launched a new logo in Dec 2018, designed by Mackey Saturday. New logo.

## Key facts

- Brand: Unsplash
- Launched: Dec 2018
- Studio: Mackey Saturday
- What changed: New logo.
- Why: Unsplash said its generic camera logo was easily confused with other products' camera icons, especially once Unsplash was embedded through its API.
- Industry: Design tools
- Logos: https://rebrandlog.com/logos/unsplash-2018/before.svg (before), https://rebrandlog.com/logos/unsplash-2018/after.svg (after)

## The rebrand, explained

Unsplash built its name on free, high quality photography, and its original logo deliberately stayed out of the way: a plain camera icon. In a blog post on 12 December 2018, signed by Mikael Cho with designers Kirill Zakharov and Charles Deluvio, the company explained that the generic look was intentional. It wanted Unsplash to be a distraction free zone about the beauty of images, where nothing got in the way, not even a logo.

The philosophy failed in practice. The company admitted the camera was easily confused with camera icons from Apple, Instagram, Dropbox and Google, and that you could barely tell it apart from an image search result for the words camera icon. The launch of the Unsplash API made it worse: with Unsplash embedded inside other products, its camera was mistaken for the ordinary upload buttons those products already used. The blog put it bluntly: the logo was no longer doing its job.

The in house design team worked with Mackey Saturday, whom the company quoted as saying that a core function of a logo is to be distinctive. Belarusian creative industry portal The Bytheway described the brief in the same terms: the old logo and type were indistinguishable from any other camera icon. Its account of the solution is that the new symbol is based on the idea of selecting an image on the site, with the first letter of the name clearly visible in it. The simple form is built on a perfect square for easy recognition, keeps the same overall proportions as the old camera symbol, and leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Unsplash itself leaned into that ambiguity, saying the mark could be seen however you want to see it.

This is a rare case of a company openly diagnosing its own logo as a failure, and the diagnosis is correct. A camera glyph is a system icon, not an identity, and once Unsplash lived inside other apps it was literally indistinguishable from the interface. The replacement is minimal to the point of austerity, a shape that will mean nothing until people learn them. But that is the deal with abstract marks: they trade instant meaning for ownership. For a service whose real brand is the photography itself, an ownable, quiet shape is exactly the right compromise.

In short: From system icon to actual logo.

## Sources

- https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_for_unsplash_by_mackey_saturday.php
- https://unsplash.com/blog/a-new-logo-for-unsplash/
- https://mackeysaturday.com/project/unsplash

## Cite this

Rebrand Log, "Unsplash new logo (2018)", https://rebrandlog.com/rebrand/unsplash-2018/, last updated 2026-10-21.