<story><title>Designing the Facebook Company Brand</title><url>https://facebook.design/companybrand</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oflannabhra</author><text>I know it is easy to be cynical on these types of &amp;quot;announcements&amp;quot;, but I am having a really, really hard time understanding how curved strokes (or any branding decision) can result in empathy or &amp;quot;open space for peoples stories&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Empathy is a human characteristic. To think that a word mark can have (or even &lt;i&gt;create&lt;/i&gt;) it is patently ridiculous. In fact, I&amp;#x27;d say it cheapens the meaning of the word to the point where true empathy means less.&lt;p&gt;This press release contains a type of language specific to our current time that will age like milk.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pembrook</author><text>You don&amp;#x27;t understand it because, like myself and most people on this site, you&amp;#x27;re probably a hyper-rational engineering type. We gravitated towards working in this field for a reason.&lt;p&gt;The rest of the world has very strong negative reactions when confronted with a product branded like this:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vim.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vim.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;...and they have very positive reactions to a product branded like this:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;slack.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;slack.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;How could the reaction be so different when we&amp;#x27;re just talking about a few lines, curves, colors and aesthetics?&lt;p&gt;It turns out, most humans are emotionally stimulated by visual associations and stories. This is the definition of branding. Empathy would be understanding that most people are not like us.</text></comment>
<story><title>Designing the Facebook Company Brand</title><url>https://facebook.design/companybrand</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oflannabhra</author><text>I know it is easy to be cynical on these types of &amp;quot;announcements&amp;quot;, but I am having a really, really hard time understanding how curved strokes (or any branding decision) can result in empathy or &amp;quot;open space for peoples stories&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Empathy is a human characteristic. To think that a word mark can have (or even &lt;i&gt;create&lt;/i&gt;) it is patently ridiculous. In fact, I&amp;#x27;d say it cheapens the meaning of the word to the point where true empathy means less.&lt;p&gt;This press release contains a type of language specific to our current time that will age like milk.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>madoublet</author><text>I feel the irony is that a lot of the text arrangements in the examples do not have enough contrast to be universally accessible. So, I feel like even the designers are missing the point on empathy.</text></comment>