# YouTube new logo (2017)

> YouTube launched a new logo on 29 Aug 2017, designed by YouTube in-house and Saffron Brand Consultants. New logo.

## Key facts

- Brand: YouTube
- Launched: 29 Aug 2017
- Studio: YouTube in-house and Saffron Brand Consultants
- What changed: New logo.
- Why: YouTube redesigned its logo because the old one was dated and had to carry a growing family of services on almost any screen.
- Industry: Streaming
- Logos: https://rebrandlog.com/logos/youtube-2017/before.svg (before), https://rebrandlog.com/logos/youtube-2017/after.svg (after)

## The rebrand, explained

For twelve years YouTube's logo was the one co-founder Chad Hurley made in 2005: the word You followed by Tube inside a red rounded rectangle, set in a modified Alternate Gothic, a face Morris Fuller Benton drew in 1903. Christopher Bettig, head of YouTube's art department, told The Verge the trouble was literal, the word tube sitting in a tube, and that years of manual tweaks had left odd details, down to the two Us not matching.

The context was scale. YouTube reached over 1.5 billion people a month, The Verge reported, on almost any screen, and was splitting into a family of services; Bettig later listed Premium, Music, TV, Kids, Gaming and more as names the mark had to carry. The new logo arrived in late August 2017 alongside a redesigned desktop and mobile app.

Meanwhile the play button, the UI element on every video, had become what Bettig called an unofficial shorthand for the brand. In August 2017 it was promoted to the icon, placed to the left of a wordmark freed from its box. The team tried a dynamic, ever-changing Y symbol first and dropped it once it hit the product. The red was also adjusted to tie more closely to video.

Type was the bigger project. YouTube Sans, built on the grid of the old play icon, was first drafted as a logo, judged too distracting, and redeployed as a brand typeface, while a second face, YouTube Logo, kept a link to Alternate Gothic but was tuned for screens and small sizes. The work was led in-house by Bettig's art department, with outside type and brand specialists brought in to scale it.

The typeface drew the sharpest critique. Type designer Nina Stössinger, writing in Typographica when YouTube Sans first surfaced on YouTube TV, called it a subpar execution of a shallow concept, pointing to bumpy curves, clogged joins and incomplete kerning. Bettig has since conceded the point in his own way: writing for Google Design, he said the font's quirks added up to something always shouting look at me, and that the team had gone too far, which is why the logo got its own calmer face.

Bettig's own summary, evolution not revolution, is fair. It is the rare redesign where the logo simply caught up with what users already recognised as YouTube.

In short: YouTube stopped putting its name in a box and let the play button be the logo it already was.

## Other rebrands of YouTube

- [YouTube (2013)](https://rebrandlog.com/rebrand/youtube-2013/) Aug 2013
- [YouTube (2011)](https://rebrandlog.com/rebrand/youtube-2011/) Jul 2011

## Sources

- https://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_for_youtube_done_in_house.php
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
- https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/29/16216868/new-youtube-logo-redesign-font-color-app-design

## Cite this

Rebrand Log, "YouTube new logo (2017)", https://rebrandlog.com/rebrand/youtube-2017/, last updated 2026-10-20.