YouTube (2013)Copied

For years YouTube's logo barely changed: the word You beside Tube in a big red bubble, which had lost a little gloss over time but stayed fundamentally the same. In August 2013 a different mark appeared without announcement, first in the redesigned Android and iOS apps, released on 19 and 20 August with picture-in-picture viewing, playlists and what YouTube's engineers called a cleaner, simpler look shared with other Google apps, and then on YouTube's Facebook and Twitter profiles, though not on the website.

The icon arrived inside a bigger product change. The Verge reported on 19 August that YouTube was redesigning its Android and iOS apps around rectangular cards, with picture-in-picture playback that let people keep browsing while a video played in a corner, playlist search for the first time and more prominent like and dislike buttons, and that the update included a new app icon. Marketing Dive, rounding up the year's redesigns, noted that the red box with a white play button would not replace the older, more recognisable logo but was being used for more of YouTube's apps and icons.

The new mark was built around a flattened red play button, two-tone red and white with a subtle shadow inside the triangle, with thin lettering for the name beneath it. The Verge noted that it echoed the flat looks of iOS 7 and Windows Phone and lined up with Google's other Android icons, especially Chrome and Drive.

Android Community, covering the Android release, listed the new icon among the changes of a ground-up redesign built around Google Now-style cards.

When The Verge asked whether this was a real redesign, YouTube said its main logo was a core part of the brand and was not going away, but that it was increasingly using its play button for apps and icons. In other words, it was a secondary mark, not a replacement.

The Verge's reading was that the play button could become a stronger way for YouTube to represent itself than its name alone, and it is hard to disagree. The 2013 move is less a rebrand than a hedge, but it was the right hedge. The bubble wordmark was fairly indistinct outside its split look, while a red play button is about as ownable as a symbol gets, and YouTube had been sitting on it all along.