A lot of answers on here oppose the idea of “brand identity” and want to emphasize instead the site’s purpose, how accessible it is, how well it functions, and so on. But I would like to make a few comments **in terms of the brand**. It’s hard to put into words, but **both of these designs evoke _someone trying to be StackExchange_.** It feels like [one of the clones](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2267/are-there-any-clones-alternatives-for-running-a-stack-exchange-style-qa-site), or like a site for a company that doesn’t exist yet beyond VC funding and a website: that wants to pass itself off as older and more authoritative than it is. And I *do* really like some things about these designs. I see the appeal of [Cyberbougie](https://cari.institute/aesthetics/cyberbougie) and [Nu-Brutalism](https://cari.institute/aesthetics/nu-brutalism). The colors evoke [Michael DeForge](https://geekd-out.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/forge1-1275x1536.jpg) and [programming color schemes](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/20509355/83603214-3c1a6500-a59e-11ea-9aa0-c05d16432f00.png); the text reminds me of [Compact Mag](https://www.compactmag.com/); the style suggests a similar intended user base to [Canva](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RAeyDMgoC8c/XOD3DRPcdmI/AAAAAAAAEmU/4GUBN_S2nPE2t4bsO9Ag-D4RTvs9POtdACLcBGAs/s1600/canva-news.png). **They’re absolutely on-trend—but that’s the problem here!** Something feels wrong about making it follow trends of web design: following is for followers. It suggests that StackExchange is *imitating* or *trying to be* something else. But it isn’t. **StackExchange already has an incredibly powerful brand.** StackExchange in the same category as Wikipedia: it’s *infrastructure*. As you say in the blog post, it’s a *spine* and *backbone* for the rest of the internet.<sup>1</sup> ## StackExchange is *the real thing.* By analogy, consider soda pop. [Poppi](https://drinkpoppi.com/) is [Paperback Chic](https://cari.institute/aesthetics/paperback-chic), which is appropriate for its brand identity. Poppi is fashionable, it’s of the present day, and its product is _a nod to_ soda. Its brand is *about* the brand of soda: it says, “what if we took *soda*, but put a new twist on it?” [![Poppi cans][1]][1] Now imagine if Coca-Cola wanted to go Paperback Chic: [![Terrible Coca-Cola logo with a pink background and white text, a parody of Paperback Chic branding][2]][2] Awful, right? **The power of Coca-Cola’s brand comes from the fact that it is foundational to the idea of soda.** You understand Poppi in terms of soda, and you understand soda in terms of Coca-Cola. They can *afford* to have a logo from the 19th century painted in loopy cursive. [![Coca-Cola logo, red on transparent background][3]][3] Coca-Cola’s power is in its legacy, not in its youth. A soda brand looks like Coca-Cola or doesn’t, but Coca-Cola shouldn’t try to look like a soda brand. Well, StackExchange shouldn’t try to look like programming, because programming already looks like StackExchange. ## The more “design” there *appears* to be, the less “real“ it looks. Of course everything has a design; the point is that some designs announce themselves more than others. Consider [Wikipedia’s (in my opinion excellent) redesign](https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/01/18/wikipedia-gets-a-fresh-new-look-first-desktop-update-in-a-decade-puts-usability-at-the-forefront/). They added features, they tweaked the look a little bit, but mostly they just reorganized the layout of the page to make it easier to navigate. It’s still _very_ much a classic website: a nice, clean, sturdy thing with useful information all over it. Wikipedia feels like it will always be there. Wikipedia feels like it will still work at the bottom of the ocean. Wikipedia feels *real*. **They should keep it that way, and so should we.** Because this site is actually pretty great as-is. ----- <sup>1</sup> By the way, I’m a little bothered by the stack connected into a spine. [![the new stackexchange stack, fused into a spine][4]][4] >The once disparate stacks now connect to form a spine or backbone — representing our ambition to reprise our role as a vital source of knowledge for technologists. I get the metaphor, but recall that [“stack” is already a metaphor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_(abstract_data_type)): a stack is a data structure that stores and retrieves _individual_ units of information, like a Pez dispenser holding a stack of candy. You push things onto it and pop things off one at a time. But now we can’t? The candy is fused together into a cluster of homogeneous content? [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/Jpa0vOd2.png [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/0kLF3teC.png [3]: https://i.sstatic.net/TMb5DkCJ.png [4]: https://i.sstatic.net/TYodl0Jj.png