How Tumblr Has Changed the Importance of the Logo
Blogging culture has always been a bit haphazard, and the amount of ugly blogs out there is endless. Common sins include giant banners showing the Eiffel tower, covered in Papyrus font and drop shadows, harsh white text on a black background, and empty space littered with Google ads.
Owning a blog forces the masses to brand themselves. Their header is their logo, and their blog is their visual language. But it’s not easy – designing a logo and website is something agencies spend months on. The masses don’t exactly know what to do with this task.
Lately I’ve noticed that with the growing prominence of Tumblr, the emphasis on DIY branding is diminishing. This is because of two reasons.
1. Tumblr’s themes set your blog name in professional typography
Tumblr’s theme garden features free themes that simply set your blog name into the its default header, letting its own typography create essentially a non-logo for you. As you can see above, you get the design savvy of a real designer, but you lose the uniqueness a logo should have because thousands of other people out there have the same one.
Tumblr isn’t the first blogging platform to set your blog name in a theme’s header type, but it’s the first to provide little incentive for people to replace that type with their own custom banner. This is because of reason number two …
2. Tumblr’s social dashboard means that people don’t actually have to look at your blog very often.
Because most Tumblr users pick blogs to follow on its built-in, well-designed social dashboard, there is little visual distinction between reading one blog or another. In this context, the content takes over. There is still a small square on the corner of a post that users can brand as they please, inserting a logo at times but oftentimes instead just using a picture of themselves.
Should people choose to actually click through to your blog, the theme provides an easy reading format for them to explore more, although it doesn’t need to do much hard work because so few people are reading on your actual site.
Because of this, Tumblr has far less bizarre logos than other blogging platforms. Its lack of emphasis on the design of your actual blog means more people just stick with the provided themes. Things become more homogenous, but they’re a hell of a lot prettier.
Hopefully this culture implicitly teaches people that the key to making a logo is to cut out excess cuteness and let the type do the heavy lifting. That is, if they even feel the need to make them anymore.