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An image showing the evolution of the Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange brand identities

Over the past few months, you'll have noticed our new brand identity showing up - we redesigned stackoverflow.co, refreshed the blog, and updated our social profiles. Our new font is also free to use and has been used on 4,500 websites. It’s great to see how versatile it is.

Next week we will share a first look at a new beta experience for Stack Overflow. Among the changes, you'll find a new ‘Communities’ section in the sidebar that brings all the sites you're a member of together in one place, making it easier to move between them.

This step toward a more unified experience is also the moment we will formally retire the old Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange logos, replacing them with the new logo we developed with your input last year. There is some nuance to this however: if your SE network site has a custom logo (not just the SE logo), we are not replacing it. We are adding the new logo above, not replacing the custom logos.

You can see in this graphic how this will play out across the various touchpoints:

An image showing how the Stack Exchange brand will now be shown in the context of the Stack Overflow brand

One of the driving questions behind this work was simple: “When someone lands on one of our sites for the first time, do they understand what they're looking at?” Too often, the answer was “no”. The relationship between Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange, the broader network, and our business products was confusing — even for people who'd been here a while. So we made the decision to bring everything under the Stack Overflow name, reflecting what had already become true in how most of the world refers to us (and ourselves, going back a long time).

We know that for many of you, the Stack Exchange name carries real meaning and that nuance between what is SO vs. SE was already clear to you, having seen it evolve. This isn't about diminishing the communities that built this network — it's about making them more visible and more accessible under a name that people already recognize. After all, that’s how Stack Exchange came to be, with Stack Overflow as the gateway to places for more detailed discussions, hobbies and non-technical topics. As co-founder Joel Spolsky once said:

But you know how programmers are. They “have babies.” Or “take pictures of babies.” So our users started building Stack Exchange sites on unrelated topics, like parenting and photography, [...]

We'll start working through the practical implications of unifying the experience — some of which you've already helpfully raised — including domains, naming, themes, and other specifics. We'll share more as those plans take shape. For our Stack Exchange sites, the logo addition shown above will be the only Stack Overflow beta change the sites will see in 2026.

For those that want to dig further into our design elements, you can find our new guidelines and assets here. If you have ideas for where you'd like to see the new identity used - merch, community pages, profile elements - we're genuinely interested, so share them below.

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    It is already difficult for a lot of users to understand the difference between main meta and SO meta, using the same logo on both sites must be very confusion for casual users. Commented Feb 18 at 16:45
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    @samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz it's probably going away anyway, some time after all community based curation is removed, eliminating most purposes of per-site meta existing. Commented Feb 18 at 16:45
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    Hate to say it, but with the different font it now looks like "STOCK OVERFLOW". Commented Feb 18 at 16:49
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    IMO, there's no reason to push this corporate design. “When someone lands on one of our sites for the first time, do they understand what they're looking at?” In my experience, yes. When I first joined, I immediately understood the interface of the site. In fact, this makes it even harder for new users that join. Realize how the themed sites used to say "Stack Exchange" in the top left corner to indicate that it is, in fact, not stackoverflow? With that gone, new users have one less method to differentiate both sites. Commented Feb 18 at 17:23
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    Logo redesigns are the corporate equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Y'all should have taken the money spent, and spent it on actually promoting the sites out in the real world. Commented Feb 18 at 18:36
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    The history is nice, but can you put the new logo in the post too? Commented Feb 18 at 19:33
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    the new logo is in the post, it's just too small to see without opening the image in a new tab. Commented Feb 18 at 19:45
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    2009 SE Logo is awesome! Never seen that because I'm relatively new to SE. Commented Feb 20 at 9:47
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    I don't like putting down other peoples work, but this is tagged with discussion, sooo: The typography of that new logo just looks like the name of the company has been written out in a text editor and screenshot, it's just extremely generic text with no personality whatsoever. Commented Feb 20 at 12:23
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    How much money did Stack Exchange spend on this task? How much more is allocated to be spent? Commented Feb 23 at 3:30
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    Why? The old logo is fine! Commented Feb 24 at 1:34
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    I didn't see this mentioned anywhere so I'll just add that the favicon looks like shit Commented Feb 24 at 18:40
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    What a waste of time. Just revert it, the previous design was great. Commented Feb 24 at 19:21
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    Switching to monochrome is certainly one of the choices of all time. Commented Feb 24 at 20:28
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    "Before" look: Cool and inviting! Love it! "After" look: Clunky, clumsy, obnoxious, crude and ... just too heavy. Commented Feb 25 at 5:23

32 Answers 32

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the new logo we developed with your input last year

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

You shared two "mood boards", both of which received overwhelmingly negative feedback.

You then held a vote where 1 in 4 people cast empty ballots. The "winning" mood board (with less than half the votes) had the logo which was most similar to the current one.

Your follow-up posts do not mention the new logo at all.

The post on "color and typography" also failed to mention that you were designing a new font.

Please stop pretending that your announcements are discussions. Publish your corporate redesign on your corporate blog, and admit that you have no interest in the opinions of your current users, only an unwavering belief in your "vision".

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    I'll just leave here a quote from a comment in the previous post, 7 months ago: "this seems a GREAT way to make the choice completely meaningless (since no one but you knew what the choice was about in the first place) and thus be able to... do what you already decided while claiming that user input was listened to" Commented Feb 19 at 21:37
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    This is the first time I hear that they sought out any kind of input. But now that I checked it, I see that they didn't need any input. It was just an announcement post so that they could say they "asked". Commented Feb 24 at 21:44
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    Wait, there was a vote? Commented Feb 26 at 8:47
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    They ‘held a vote’ in much the same way North Korea ‘holds elections’. Commented Mar 4 at 14:27
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Hey, that's an insult to North Korea. Believe me, the WPK accepts far more community input in candidate selection than this. Commented Mar 7 at 17:54
  • @rartorata Accept it, yes, but are also quite likely to ultimately ignore it if it doesn’t suit them – just like here. Commented Mar 8 at 9:55
  • It's honestly quite ironic because in their own words: "There were 26.97% (233 votes) empty ballots"... For those who don't know anything about democracy/politics, the usual rate of empty ballots is 1-3%. Anything above like 10% is serious reason to believe that something went really really wrong. Anything above 25% is quite literally unheard of in nation-wide politics, that kind of shit only happens in dictator-like "districts" / small regions within nations that aren't moderated properly by the higherups (and even then it's extremely rare). Commented Mar 11 at 13:46
  • Not to mention, it obviously ignores the fact that the original post (now) has -344 upvotes, which means... there are people upvoting (naturally), but the amount of people downvoting is so much greater. Making it the 20th most downvoted question (until it was surpassed by this question). Commented Mar 11 at 13:49
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    Fun fact: more people have now upvoted this Answer than voted for the "winning" design. Commented Mar 19 at 13:59
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This feels like a prime example of "Cool old logo gets replaced with boring modern logo".

enter image description here

Toss it on the pile, I guess...

enter image description here

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    I first thought that your before/after with the SO logo was a joke you just made up... Then I checked... God... Commented Feb 20 at 17:24
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    Wow, this is a very lucid realization! ("We are the Borg.") Commented Feb 23 at 14:08
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    I would argue that a lot of those examples are improvements, making the logo easier to read and (imo) more modern. But the SO logo was already clear, modern and recognisable. The change they're making here is from a modern logo to... basically plain text?? Commented Feb 23 at 14:10
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    @DBS Logos aren't there for information however... Commented Feb 24 at 7:16
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    @Lundin Perhaps not the primary purpose, but conveying some identity information is a pretty important part of what a logo does. To me, that old "YvesSaintLaurent" is borderline unreadable even when I make an active effort, if I saw it in passing there is no way I would ever remember what brand it belonged to (Not that their new logo is great either, but at least I can read it) Commented Feb 24 at 10:55
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    @DBS And yet I would still recognize the old Yves logo because it was so famous - I don't even need to read it. Plus it stood out from the crowd if you are shopping for perfume etc so you easily spot it. If I saw something with the new logo I would actually assume it was some cheap copycat brand. It literally looks like they opened MS Word and then hit caps lock. Commented Feb 24 at 11:44
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    Font face can be part of a good change, but changing from something with personality and history to just a font face is lifeless, dull, boring. But, given the leadership of this org and their chosen social and cultural foundations, that is not surprising. Commented Feb 24 at 18:01
  • 1. RIMOWA, 2-3. No one, 4. Microsoft, 5. SAINT LAURENT, others - disqualified. Commented Feb 24 at 18:22
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    don't forget GM and Target, I mean "target" Commented Feb 25 at 4:05
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    The old eBay one was a little much, but the new one is too generic Commented Feb 25 at 19:53
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    Its worser than that, many still retain at least the color there. They don't completely throw colour, they use monochrome only on places where it looks good. Commented Feb 26 at 6:10
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    @DBS Logos are not supposed to be "read". They are supposed to have a unique design that makes them instantly recognizable. All of these are total failures in this respect. Commented Feb 27 at 9:07
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    LOL they're not even logos anymore. They're just ordinary texts in either UPPER or lower case XD Commented Feb 27 at 9:08
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    @EmilJeřábek I mean they all are instantly recognizable... because they're just the company name in a font. But absolutely right that they're just bad, not least because they don't have any decent recognition when they're small or far away (which IG companies don't care about any more because why would they want you to see their logo anywhere besides on their own website) Commented Feb 27 at 20:46
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    I get depressed by looking at the list Commented Mar 5 at 21:38
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Way to keep killing the Stack Overflow brand.

The new logo looks more like part of a sun or a saw, or maybe a slinky. Nothing about it says "stuff is overflowing". It looks painfully generic and is not going to be memorable.

we will formally retire the old Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange logos, replacing them with the new logo we developed with your input last year

Stop gaslighting us. You did not develop that with our input. You developed it in spite of our input. At this point, we'd actually be more satisfied if you just straight-up admitted that you don't care about the community. Constantly lying to us while hosting feel-good community engagement events and giving shallow platitudes somehow feels more insulting than just being told that we don't matter to you.

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    There's no more overflow (pun intended). The container in the old logo is what implied that it's Stack Overflow. Without it, it's just a 4 lines in a quarter circle. It's a metaphor for what they did. They took what made Stack Overflow, Stack Overflow, and now it's Stack Overflow no more. Commented Feb 24 at 21:49
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    It actually takes great competence to design a logo consisting of 4 black/white rectangles, tilted slightly. I couldn't possibly do that myself in 5 minutes using MS Word as the graphics editor. What will they come up with next, 4 rounded rectangles? Colored rectangles? Word art? The sky is the limit. Commented Feb 25 at 11:36
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    @Dharman They truly have gone from stack overflow to "everything is just falling over 🤷" Commented Feb 27 at 20:48
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This looks like a burger menu next to a broken burger menu:

The hamburger menu icon next to the Stack Overflow logo.

One might need to get used to the new logo to unsee this.

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    You seem to be making the incorrect assumption that the design was made carefully, by professionals. Commented Feb 25 at 7:31
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    The whole top bar/side bar needs a rethink especially at mobile widths - which it looks like we might be getting, but at what cost? Commented Feb 26 at 0:32
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    You also have the speech-bubble hamburger menu listing all SE sites on the right end of the sticky header so there are now three things looking like a hamburger menu in there, two of which function as an actual hamburger menu but for vastly different things. And on meta.SE if you're scrolled up it's even worse than that because you also have a variant of the same speech-bubble icon (with 4 segments instead of 3) directly below the search box which also somewhat looks like a hamburger menu but is just the site logo... Commented Feb 26 at 13:52
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    C'mon, AI is a professional, right? Commented Mar 9 at 20:27
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Screenshot of my Firefox pinned tabs: The first icon is a small brightly orange square with four black elements stacked on it. I find it slightly hard to focus on the image because of the colours. You know, like when you have green background and red text.

Just now I almost thought I'd discovered a bug related to Firefox's handling of transparency in favicons.

But it seems like this is Stack Overflow's new favicon.

Is it just me, or is it hard to see the stack elements because of the colours?

You know, like when you have bright red text on a bright green background or vice versa.

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    Its almost like they didnt listen to the feedback on the colour scheme at all 🤔 Commented Feb 24 at 19:15
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    @Robotnik Shocker, that. Commented Feb 24 at 19:27
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    @Robotnik What do you mean, when they polled the community last year and gave us the deeply meaningful choice of "dark text on bright orange" or "dim text on brighter orange" we all clearly voted for option 1. /s Commented Feb 24 at 20:58
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    Yes, the colors are awful. The whole design is horrible. Commented Feb 25 at 9:49
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    I never understand why the dark mode is only avaliable on the SO Stack. Any reason for it? Commented Feb 25 at 11:27
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    @DhairyaKumar Mostly it’s that they don’t want to have to deal with the different colour pallets for the various themed sites, and that they don’t see it as a priority, if I remember correctly. Commented Feb 25 at 15:49
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    Even in Chrome, the favicon is so ugly that I moved it to a folder. SO has lived in my Bookmarks Bar for years; no more. :( Commented Feb 25 at 18:51
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    This is what made me look up this post. Unbelievably bad favicon. I think they made it in darkmode only and never tested light themes- this is becoming more common, unfortunately. Commented Feb 27 at 7:12
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    Ack why is it so far off centre... oh wait that's the chromatic aberration on my glasses. I hope, anyway. Commented Feb 27 at 10:39
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    @Kyle: I actually made the exact same observation! This icon is very likely to be interpreted by my brain as having the stacks non-centred because of my glasses and their chromatic aberration. Actually, if I move my head right and left, while keeping my eyes on the icon, the stacks are animated sideways. Pretty cool, actually. This would be a nice physics demo (but it's not a nice favicon IMHO). Commented Feb 27 at 10:43
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    It is a little wild that they appear to have removed what little trace of color there is from the actual website, only to add that color back but only in the favicon... exactly the wrong single place to bring that color back, especially with how the color scheme (at least in my eyes) is associated with one other particular site (and how many folks use SO at work, where that other site shouldn't) Commented Feb 27 at 21:00
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    Yo what's with the orange background in favicon? In your BETA site, there are almost ZERO colours anywhere so that really contradicts your future vision... I hope you didn't use some crappy AI to design these changes for ya Commented Mar 2 at 13:18
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    I thought the tab crashed and it was in error or there was some type of notification. Bright orange is an alarm color. In nature these colors mean poison or fire. Not a website with programming questions. Commented Mar 3 at 12:55
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    The logo and corporate site uses "Electric Orange" #ff5e00, but the rest of the site still uses "Deep Orange" #e7700d, so it really looks off-brand. Commented Mar 13 at 18:24
  • ...maybe inspired by this beauty. Commented Apr 2 at 5:18
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I don't care much about the redesign for a few reasons:

  1. It really looks like "Stock Overflow" in a couple screenshots
  2. A redesign isn't necessary unless the design itself is broken. It is hard for me to tell the difference between the left and right pictures unless I look very closely.
  3. A new design is not going to drive traffic up. If it does, then it's built on hopes and dreams, not fact (more opinion than anything).

Having said that, I would prefer that things are CLEAR TO READ, and do not care much for whether a logo is in colour or not, or the words say Exchange or Overflow. I don't think there are people browsing a search engine's results based on an image of the site - if they want SE/SO, they know the site name and URL.

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    Logo designs are the ultimate bikeshed project. They have no impact on the real world Commented Feb 18 at 18:38
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    The deck chairs on the Titanic absolutely need to be rearranged. Commented Feb 23 at 8:35
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    Their stock is overflowing. That seems about right to me Commented Feb 24 at 18:16
  • Some weird optical illusion also makes it look like St.ock overflow to me Commented Feb 25 at 15:49
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    @Richard I disagree. Logo may not have a critical impact, it won't be "I won't use this product because of the logo" for anyone, but it will be "hey, I heard about that!" for many. Commented Feb 25 at 21:28
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    @Yksisarvinen - If the product is good, people don't really give a hoot about the logo. If the product is failing, they don't give a hoot that the company has changed the logo Commented Feb 25 at 21:32
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    It is a little astounding that they've had a logo marking a well respected hallmark of an industry... and managed to redesign it into "words but in a bold font" and even though it's literally just words it's unreadable and unrecognizable Commented Feb 27 at 20:50
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So we made the decision to bring everything under the Stack Overflow name, reflecting what had already become true in how most of the world refers to us (and ourselves, going back a long time).

I was never very attached to the laboured and hard-to-pronounce pun "Stack Exchange" (and never understood why you didn't just buy stack.com for the overarching collective site and use "Stack **" like "Stack Photography", "Stack Parenting" etc); but as has been said many, many times before, if everything's "Stack Overflow", how exactly are we supposed to talk specifically about Stack Overflow the coding Q&A site?

Many people have mentioned many times before (example) that Mozilla tried something similar with their flagship "Firefox" brand and reverted quickly because it became too confusing to refer to Firefox the browser when everything was Firefox.

How do you internally as staff refer to Stack Overflow the public-facing coding Q&A site, when everything is Stack Overflow?

(maybe staff don't often talk about Stack Overflow the public-facing Q&A site and that's half the problem?)

[Edit] I just re-read the question and I thought there was a typo in the first sentence, but no, it turns out https://stackoverflow.co and https://stackoverflow.com are different websites! With different branding, content, focus etc!

Is this how you differentiate it? Do people within the company walk around talking about "dot com" and "dot co" depending on whether they're talking about the coding QA site or the meta-brand? (not the meta of the brand, or the meta of the meta brand, those are different sites)

If so, surely you understand that this won't work literally anywhere except inside your office?

And how do you differentiate SEO between the two competing stackoverflow\.com?s?

[Another edit] on desktop-sized screens, .co says "Stack Overflow Business" at the top (but this doesn't appear anywhere on mobile-sized screens, which just have the now-universal "Everything's falling over" logo). I guess the name "Stack Overflow Business" makes some sense today, but how's that going to work when every stackexchange QA site is "Stack Overflow {topic}", and for example "Stack Overflow Finance" will be not a site about the finances of the company but a QA site about finance in general, while "Stack Overflow Business" will be not a QA site about business in general but a business site about the company?

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  • Cause there to an extent was a theme and an overall vision that was inclusive of the whole network, that was gradually eroded. Commented Feb 20 at 3:47
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    I don't know how they refer to things internally, but one option is calling the public-facing coding Q&A site Stack Overflow Stack Overflow for clarity once the rebranding happens. It just rolls off the tongue and also makes the difference between Stack Overflow Meta and Stack Overflow Stack Overflow Meta readily apparent. Commented Feb 20 at 13:50
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    Is there enough space for "Stack Overflow Stack Overflow"? We don't want Stack Overflow Stack Overflow to overflow Commented Feb 22 at 21:48
  • Maybe "Stack Overflow code"? Commented Feb 25 at 11:32
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    @Anyon I would rate that suggestion as "so-so" ;) Commented Feb 26 at 15:05
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    I really liked the decision to move to a general StackExchange a few years back and I refer to the whole network of sites as SE. When I read something on finance.stackexchange, I say SE. So do people in my network (mainly programmers, mind you). I never understood why they reverted it. Commented Feb 27 at 7:11
  • I also use "SE" when commenting on SE, but I'm very aware that it means nothing to anyone not already familiar with these sites (and it isn't even googlable). Would be so much simpler if we could just say "Finance Stack" or "Stack Finance" and point them finance.stack.com or whatever. Commented Mar 1 at 14:34
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    What on earth is that broken font on the .co site? Commented Mar 2 at 1:03
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    Ohh..."Stack Exchange" was a pun on "stock exchange"? I've been around forever and never realised. I just thought it was a weird awkward phrase. Commented Mar 19 at 2:55
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Like I've recently said on another site change: This is more flailing from you people at StackExchange Inc. But - let's put it in terms you like to use:

The new StackOverflow logo is not welcoming.

You replaced a relevant and playful visual metaphor of an overflowing stack in bright friendly colors - with a dark and morbid graphic (that is sometimes even a bit confusing as @stackprotector pointed out).

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We already have confused users posting programming questions on non programming sites. Universal Stack Overflow branding will confuse these poor lost souls further.

Are there any accommodations to ease these folks confusion when they see the 'new' Stack Overflow Logo, and assume they're on SO, when they already get confused with the current clearly obvious demarcation between sites?

I just handled one of these on Super User, which is one of the sites with both clear branding and its own domain name. There were also an increasing number of questions on the new SO beta here - so it might be adding to confusion, rather than reducing it.

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    Thanks for this feedback. We definitely want to minimize any confusion as much as possible. I will talk to the team and see if we can come up with any potential solutions. Commented Feb 26 at 0:17
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    The solution has been brought up fairly repeatedly over the last few weeks. Stack Exchange has been our identity for years - and putting the entire network under a stack overflow branding isn't a solution to confusion. As per my other answer - I think greater sensitivity to network history and the needs of the network, over what seems better to marketing is a good thing. Commented Feb 26 at 0:25
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    See also Could we get some clarity over the Stack Exchange brand being sunset?. I've been trying to get this seen for quite a while - and communication from the company has been really bad on these topics. We try every channel we have and get nothing till the actual release. Commented Feb 26 at 1:03
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    @EricMartin "Thanks for this feedback"?! Really? Do you really see this as some kind of fresh insight that you couldn't possibly have seen coming? Did you really not see any of the previous attempts of people to raise exactly this point? Did you, in fact, think at all about how this "brand transformation" is actually going to work? Commented Feb 26 at 15:09
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    @EricMartin Also, any chance of responding to any of the other feedback on this page? Or do you not have any response to the criticism, you're just going to stay silent and wait for us all to go away? Commented Feb 26 at 15:13
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This is... not nice to look at.

inbox page on mobile

The new logo on the top left looks cut-off, and the gap between it and the search button is weird.

The orange and black Stack Overflow logo for chat sites is hard to look at and garish. Also, why do Stack Exchange chat sites have the Stack Overflow logo in the inbox but not in the actual favicon?

chat favicons for so and se sites

Please no.

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    Makes you wonder if they even checked their phones in dev before sending to prod. Commented Feb 24 at 19:31
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    The top-bar logo issue was also reported here: The new SO logo doesn't display properly in the top bar on mobile – it should now be fixed. Commented Feb 24 at 20:01
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    Probably needs to be a new question when I can get a SO user to verify but - if the chat.se logo is the same as SO, someone on both chats can't tell the difference at a glance to which chat a room is in. Commented Feb 24 at 23:44
  • @JourneymanGeek It doesn't seem to extend to the actual chat favicons, so seems like a poor design decision i.sstatic.net/FyCvoy5V.png Commented Feb 25 at 0:36
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    @ThomasMarkov What do you mean "dev"? All experiments are carried out on the live SO server. By policy, apparently... Commented Feb 25 at 7:25
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    Wine red and orange is a beautiful combo though, truly brilliant design. I thought this was just a fun, comedy strip-looking picture, not an accurate and realistic representation of how the SO design team dresses and color match every day. Commented Feb 25 at 7:44
  • @Lundin Oh, the red tab background for the current tab is browser-specific and something I customised for myself :P Commented Feb 25 at 17:39
45

Logos are subjective so here' subjective feedback for you: it is really ugly. It looks tacky, low res and overall cheap. Clearly it was not made by a graphic designer but a layperson.

In my career I have sometimes worked with converting colored, high resolution logos into a monochrome version that could be displayed on a very limited 128x64 pixels resolution LCD for embedded systems. This is exactly what those converted logos looked like.

Though if you were looking for a logo that summarizes the company's direction and general competence, I would have to say it fits perfectly.

Overall: enjoy playing around with your dead site, I won't be there anyway.

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    It's the "I'll make the logo!" meme, where someone completely unskilled wants to contribute to an OSS project. Commented Mar 8 at 15:25
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The 'confusion' has entirely been bad marketing. And that's kind of the heart of the problem we've had over the years. While Stack Overflow was the original and biggest site - the distinction between that and Stack Exchange is important to many communities.

I'd stated this before, and I'd state it again - this erases the identities of the other hundred over communities that don't have a distinct name. It also confuses things cause for its entire lifetime, Stack Overflow has been developer centric. These changes mean smaller sites are erased, it increases, not decreases confusion - and it feels premature to remove branding without a clear idea of where we're going.

I'd also note that the response to the original question was overwhelmingly negative - as such could you clarify how exactly our input was taken into consideration?

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    Probably the 'confusion' occurs because we don't like what is being told , or because we don't hear what we want. Commented Feb 24 at 3:06
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    Or the company isn't understanding what we're trying to tell them - that having a distinct network identity isn't a bad thing, and there's the network outside stack overflow. "We Exist, and refuse to be told we don't matter" is not a hard concept one thinks. Commented Feb 24 at 3:50
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I am very unhappy about the change.

The old logo really looked like what it says on the tin, so there is a container, a stack of things, and they go out of the container, hence "Stack Overflow". It is simple and dynamic and conveys the meaning easily and concisely and it gets the job done.

To me the new logo looks like a book, it is black and white and way too simple, it is minimal and generic and visually it has no connection to "Stack Overflow". It also looks like a gear or a cogwheel.

Honestly when I noticed the logo in the tab bar in my browser is different from before, I thought someone must have spoofed Stack Overflow website or my DNS was hijacked somehow, I thought I wasn't browsing the real Stack Overflow website. But perhaps the real Stack Overflow website is long gone by now.

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Ehh… The new logo seems like a draft. The text being all the same weight doesn’t look great. I much prefer the lighter weight for “Stack” and a bolder weight for the secondary word; “Overflow” or “Exchange.”

Also, the four basic dashes curving in seems like an odd choice. FWIW, I initially thought it was three dashes. I would recommend the five dash configuration; allow the curve to be more pronounced. Perhaps the color can change to match/complement whatever site it is use on?

I really don’t think a 100% reworking is needed, but that’s my two cents if you care to hear about it.

PS: I agree that the new logo makes “Stack” read like “Stock” if you are quickly scanning the page.

Update: Now that is has been implemented, might I say it looks bad… It’s like Temu took over branding and design… Cheap, rushed and overall underwhelming at best…

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38

My first impression of the new logo is that it looks like someone took a nice color logo and ran it through a 1990s black-and-white photocopier. It's that same pure-black chunkiness with edges that aren't smooth and fine details that blur together. It's fine if that's what you're going for, it's just not my cup of tea.

More problematic I think is your change to the "standard template" for sites. You replaced the old graphic (a logo and the words "Stack Exchange") with the new logo all by itself. The logo is just a couple of stacked lines and bears more than a passing resemblance to the standard "hamburger menu" icon. It's even up in the top corner where you'd expect a hamburger menu to be. I did a bit of hallway UI testing with folks who I know don't use this site, and 2 out of 5 of them tried to click it like it was a hamburger menu. The old design didn't have that problem both because of the color and because the accompanying text made it clear that it was a logo and not part of the UI.

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31

This logo has always been a poor design, whether it's "Stack Exchange" or the new SO logo. The logo of the site should be taking you to that site's home page, not a different parent website.

The logo at the top of the page that follows me down the page, like all other sites with a sticky header, should take me to that site's home page. I shouldn't have to scroll to the top of the page or open a giant side menu (or have it always visible) to get back to the home page.

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23

On last year's post I raised an objection to the spine logo, because a stack means something pretty specific in programming (and so means something pretty specific to most users of this website). I see that it's unchanged:

the spine logo

But I can't find anything in the documentation explaining why we're keeping it. Is this justified somewhere else, or should we refer to the original blog post?

If I had to guess, I would say that the designers felt that the elements of the (true) stack were too close together without touching, creating an unpleasant shape tangent:

image from the original blog post, illustrating how we're fusing the elements from the stack together

Thus, I'm guessing, the designers wanted to treat it as one glyph and reduce its visual noise.

But that makes the choice here to deliberately introduce noise and break the glyphs in the stylistic sets a little confusing:

"Find knowledge to upskill. Reskill. Outskill."

Aren't you introducing the same kind of tangent with the dot on the i?

screenshot showing the letter 'i'

Anyway, since you asked:

If you have ideas for where you'd like to see the new identity used - merch, community pages, profile elements - we're genuinely interested, so share them below.

I'll take a coffee mug with a stack-glyph handle. :)

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    Wow. The heading font in the yellow screenshot is offensively horrible. Commented Feb 28 at 12:11
21

beauty personified

It seems as though SE's priority is to make a new ill-looking site.

Looks so very low quality, a sharp contrast to SE's contribution to the education and learning platforms online over the many years it has been active.

Looks like we'd need the riots of 2019 once again to wake up the firm and create something worthy, not this burger-menu.

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    That font is painful to read. Commented Mar 1 at 21:58
20

While the new logo looks somewhat bearable on the website itself, the same can't be said about it in Google search results:

new logo looking too similar to other logos

I accidentally skipped over this search result multiple times just because it blends in with all other generic orange logos like Reddit or Hackernews (which have considerable overlap with Stack Overflow users).

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  • 1
    I've heard Hackernews derided as "Orange Reddit" before. Apparently SO wants to compete for that title given the direction it's heading. Commented Mar 9 at 15:13
  • I came here to mention this. I've skipped over SO on google results multiple times today. Commented Mar 11 at 21:46
19

I know that going back to old, better logo, is likely out of the table, but can you at least tone it down a bit and use some lighter shade of dark grey instead of almost black color.

It is really an eye sore as it is visually bigger than the old one and the color makes it additionally stick out.

Stack Overflow Logo

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18

Without looking at the URL bar, if you weren't familiar with this site, what would you think it was called?

A screenshot of mathematics.stackexchange.com, which doesn't say "Stack Exchange" anywhere (except in a blog post at the site, but that's temporary.)

You've said you're planning to retire the Stack Exchange branding, and I guess at some point you'll either think of a new name or reveal the one you've already chosen. But in the meantime it's pretty silly to have a site that looks like it's just called "Mathematics" or "Physics" etc. Given that you haven't rebranded it yet, it would make more sense to have "Stack Exchange" written somewhere on the screen.

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  • 5
    And... this was brought up earlier as well. Commented Feb 27 at 0:46
  • 3
    Mathematics Stack Overflow Public Platform doesn't roll off your tongue? Yes, I think we're still waiting on them to come up with a plan for that. Commented Feb 27 at 14:27
  • @JourneymanGeek I saw that, but thought it could use some more emphasis. It wasn't obvious to me until it went live that the words "Stack Exchange" wouldn't appear on Stack Exchange sites at all! Commented Feb 27 at 15:16
  • @DanGetz the old blue logo had "Stack Exchange" written next to it in the top bar - see the images in the OP. Commented Feb 27 at 15:36
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    Oh, but not in the title. I always found that a little confusing, but the titles have already been "bare". Commented Feb 27 at 15:38
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    @DanGetz I don't think Stack Exchange was ever in the title text/graphic on the page, unless it was more than 14 years ago. Which just means having it in the top bar was actually quite important, in retrospect: it was the most obvious visual indication to the uninitiated that they were visiting a Stack Exchange site. Commented Feb 27 at 17:08
18

I have feedback about the logo and the icon.

Logo:

  • The elements (stack frames) of the pile are now attached by a corner. So instead of blocks of memory it looks more like pages of a book. Great logo for a dictionary website, encyclopedia or bookstore. But not for a programming Q&A website.
  • There is no longer a container to overflow it's no longer a "stack overflow", but simply a "stack". Might as well rename it to "stack" and drop the "overflow".
  • the old text only had the word overflow in bold. Now both stack and overflow is bold. The O of overflow is now upper case, but with the chosen font this is not clear. There is also no clear space between the words. All this combined makes the words harder to separate.
  • the name changed from stackoverflow to StackOverflow. For coders those are different names. You've accidentally changed your name.
  • no color = no soul. There is nothing wrong with a monochrome or dark mode alternative, but to make the logo always devoid of color is soulless. And also unoriginal, all logos are gravitating towards the same style. It reminds me of sci-fi stories where there is only 1 corporation left.

Tab icon:

  • The background color is orange-red. This screams alarm. In nature the color is that of poisonous animals, fire and lava. EDIT: background of tab icon is now transparent, so that issue fixed now.
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    meta.stackexchange.com/a/411553/266284 meta.stackexchange.com/questions/411312/… Commented Mar 3 at 19:00
  • 2
    The new logo even put me in mind of neck vertebrae of someone looking down. Commented Mar 4 at 2:24
  • Whether the name has changed depends on your usual programming language. As a programmer in Microsoft BASIC on a Commodore 64, the variable name is the same either way: ST (case insensitive). And that even covers StackExchange, too. Commented Mar 7 at 9:00
15

LOL
Just LOL.

And it's obviously sarcastic.

Another example of using "with your input [love/hug emoji]" done in order to fake what obviously is "let them believe we really care".
With an even terrible and implied "...we know better anyway".

Not only it's now already clear that you don't really care about what your users think, but you are even ignoring their experience, which is somehow paradoxical, considering that SE/SO is built exactly upon the experience of your users.

It's like having a farming business mostly made thanks to professional farmers, built around them and with them, that unilaterally decides absurd farming procedures, without actually considering the opinions of those farmers and experts in even "higher" fields (no pun intended), even after asking them.

You probably think that asking is good enough, and listening to the answers is not necessary if you don't like them.

If you don't really care about the expert response of your own users, then just admit it.
Don't ask, stop asking: just "DO IT!" [cit.].

You'll still get some bad critics, but, at least, it would not be caused by your own hypocrisy.

In the meantime, you can safely report to your shareholders that, if they keep supporting the current strategy, their business interests are oddly placed, as they clearly are not interested in what we (thousands, if not millions of people) do here every day, and we couldn't really care a bit about their money, since they don't really care about us to begin with.

We would prefer a dead-StackOverflow archive, than an ill-maintained stock-preoccupied fake business that deceives people.

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12

The grey logo in the bottom section of my "Network Profile" page (in light mode, if it matters) is very hard to see against the light blue background color.

A poor design choice

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12

There is a serious conceptual flaw here:

Crop of the screenshots above highligting the "localized sites" mention

The site that goes by http://pt.stackoverflow.com was never a localized version.

  • It follows the same civility and licence of most the sites of the network, it's about software development, but it stops there;

  • It was conceived in Area 51 with its own sets of rules;

  • It's about software development, but it has its own scope;

  • It has its own rules chosen by its own community.

And its name is "Stack Overflow em Português", you shouldn't suppress the "em".

Our first Meta post is: "This is NOT stackoverflow.com"

It was posted from our CM at the time, from your staff: Link: Aqui NÃO É o stackoverflow.com

And the first paragraphs, translated:

This community and this site are yours, they are different, they are unique. Enjoy! We are concerned about the possibility of people who already know the OS feeling obliged to apply the same rules here as on the English site, so let's clarify: there's no reason!

This site is not the youngest of Stack Overflow

You are a different community, with different needs... and now with its own website.

It's all yours, so don't feel obligated to adopt the rules of a large and experienced site like the OS here. You are a community with its own characteristics and that has no reason to copy the path of another.

And it goes on and on.

Please, fix that and revert to our real name.

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    De facto, Stack Overflow em Português, besides sharing the "Stack Overflow" name, is entirely an different community and should be treated this way. The community dit not voted for a new logo, a new name, etc. Commented Mar 14 at 18:28
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    But, Stack Exchange never gave a damn for what the community wants or doens't. That's a old problem that I personally don't see any solution for now and next years. They just change things as they fill their own interest and not the people who ran this website for years. Commented Mar 14 at 18:30
9

On the left, we see the original logo.

Then, through a completely unnecessary, unwarranted, and unprovoked transition,

we went to the new logo, seen on the right.

Are you completely out of your minds?

enter image description here

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8

This is an embarassingly bad change: I don't visit stackoverflow too often, so when I looked up a programming problem just now, I mentally filtered it out of the search results because I did not recognize the logo and assumed it was another AI slop website -- ironically that's true NOW, but that's not the point

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6

The favicon doesn't really play ball with Dark Reader. Also the orange background isn't very tasteful. Here's a hastely written patch.

// ==UserScript==
// @name        SE: Favicon
//
// @grant       GM_addStyle
// @require     https://greasemonkey.github.io/gm4-polyfill/gm4-polyfill.js
// @match       *://*.stackexchange.com/*
// @match       *://askubuntu.com/*
// @match       *://*.askubuntu.com/*
// @match       *://mathoverflow.net/*
// @match       *://*.mathoverflow.net/*
// @match       *://serverfault.com/*
// @match       *://*.serverfault.com/*
// @match       *://stackoverflow.com/*
// @match       *://*.stackoverflow.com/*
// @match       *://stackapps.com/*
// @match       *://*.stackapps.com/*
// @match       *://superuser.com/*
// @match       *://*.superuser.com/*
//
// @exclude      *chat.*
// @exclude      https://stackoverflow.com/c/*
// ==/UserScript==

GM_addStyle(`
    .favicon-stackexchange,
    .favicon-stackoverflow {
        background-position: 0 -6228px !important;
    }
    .favicon-stackoverflowmeta {
        background-position: 0 -6212px !important;
    }
`);

(function () {
    if (!window.location.href.match(new RegExp(".*://.*stackoverflow\.com/.*"))) {
        return;
    }
    var link = document.querySelector("link[rel~='icon']");
    if (!link) {
        link = document.createElement("link");
        link.rel = "icon";
        document.head.appendChild(link);
    }
    link.href = "https://i.sstatic.net/ipkDhQj8.png";
})();
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6

I don't think that the old StackExchange logo was useful for identifying the SO/SE connection; it looked too different from from the Stack Overflow logo. So moving to a logo common between the two is a good idea.

That said, the text "StackExchange" on the SE sites was probably the most important identifier: the parallelism with "Stack Overflow" helps makes the connection immediately for those who know enough, and even for those that don't it's very memorable once you've heard it once. Removing that, if you're worried about identifying SO/SE sites as the type of site they are, seems like a really bad idea to me.

It would have been good to present your research that indicated the actual problem, and the results of whatever testing you did to show that the redesign addressed the problem successfully. You did do this research, rather than just running on "vibe," right?

The new logo itself is just ugly, and the sense changes from "overflowing box" to "a stack of things toppling." It also has a much more brutal feel to it. Well, maybe that's right given the reaction to this. Freudian slip on the part of your design team?

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5

Not being visually impaired to read clearly my computer screen, when I throw my sight at the logo's text my mind first reads it as "StaOk Overflow". Seems the letter "C" has not enough gap to easily distinguish it from "O" with a fast glance. I would suggest to fix it since it could leak to the mass web for example with AI OCR in some circumstances...

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2

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