10 app icon redesigns: The good, the bad and the ugly

Redesigns happen. Whether a certain look has gone out of style, a brand's direction has changed, or it's just time for something fresh, many popular apps have changed the design of their icons. Instagram just changed its app icon, and while a new look was probably a good idea, many aren't happy about it.

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Instagram is far from the first app to go through this. Sometimes it's a home run, but it's rare. More often a changed icon either takes a while to get used to or is just plain bad. Occasionally, the redesign lives in infamy. 

May notable icon redesigns came after after Apple transitioned from iOS 6 to iOS 7, introducing a new design philosophy that departed from the skeuomorphism (think: leather texture and wood trim) of the past and embracing a more flat, simple aesthetic. Apps like Messages, Phone, Mail and Weather dropped the gloss in favor of minimalism, and plenty of third-party apps followed suit.

Many high-profile companies and services made the transition, with varying success. Here are the good, the bad and the ugly of the major apps that took the austere leap into modern times.

The Good

Netflix

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Netflix's app icon changed right alongside its logo design, mostly because the app is just the logo. By dropping the drop shadow, the new icon feels cleaner and more modern, better reflecting the company's transition from mailing out DVDs to streaming. The fattening of the font makes the icon feel stronger and slightly more welcoming. When comparing them side by side, the old icon almost looks stringy.

LastPass

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Password manager LastPass was represented by an asterisk until this year, and the design change was definitely a step in the right direction. By changing its icon to something rounder, the app seems less abrasive -- who wants to press their thumb onto something with all those hard edges and corners? Also, passwords aren't typically hidden by asterisks anymore; they're hidden with dots, which is where the new icon derives its design.

New York Times

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The redesign of the New York Times app icon is a textbook example of the shift from older design trends to modern ones. By dropping the busy background in favor of something lighter and cleaner, it's less cluttered. The inversion of colors with the background and the T also match how the newspaper actually looks, which implies the app itself will look comfortingly familiar.

The Bad

Tumblr

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The only thing the Tumblr icon needed to do was drop its glossy web 2.0 effect and it would have been the perfect modern logo. But when it dropped the gloss, it added new 3D effect ti the "T," popping it out of the background with deep shadow. Now it looks less like an app icon and more like someone finally figured out how to use shadows in Photoshop. The new icon is simply too busy.

Google

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After Google changed its logo, it had to switch up all of its app icons to wipe the Internet clean of its old serif-font "G" in favor of the the newer, cleaner and flatter Google look. This new G just isn't making the cut, though -- the colors are uneven, which would be ok if the top of the G ended with a more horizontal line than what it currently has. The odd end of the overhang creates a visual line that breaks away from the other lines, which makes you think, "This doesn't look quite right."

Spotify

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Spotify's icon redesign isn't so much bad as it is pointless. The service did a palette swap from a more yellowish green to a greener green, so the app icon was sure to follow. But the new, deeper green doesn't contrast as well with the dark background.

The Ugly

Medium

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Medium. M. Makes sense. But what is that on the right? It looks like a bizarrely skewed section of an Excitebike track. Medium had a decent albeit overused icon design, using the first letter of its name rather simply, and while it could have used some improvement, the new icon is not in the right direction. The way the bottom slope of the second leg of the M flows right into the base of the M's middle dip is unsettling. The colors are perfectly fine but the new icon feels flimsy and looks more like an N if you only look at the outline.

Airbnb

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Airbnb, what did you do? Sure, the "a" icon wasn't great but what is the new design supposed to be, a weird paperclip? The vague A-ness of it almost makes it passable as having anything to do with Airbnb, but it's not right. At all. It also happens to be distractingly sexual, though it's up to the viewer which genitalia it looks like the most. 

Uber

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Uber is a particularly unique entry in this list because it started out with a really great icon. It was clean, modern and distinctive -- even bordering on futuristic, which made it enticing. The new icon, on the other hand, is awful. It says nothing about what Uber is, and looks like a weird mess. It looks like something resembling a "U" has fallen over on its side on top of a bizarrely busy background. What are the lines in the background supposed to be? What is the big white thing in the middle? What does it all mean?

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