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Instagram’s big redesign goes live with a colorful new icon, black-and-white app and more
By Sarah Perez as written on techcrunch.com
Instagram’s new icon is pink. Well, it’s pink and purple and yellow and orange. It’s definitely different. And that’s not all the company has changed today. Instagram this morning is rolling out a radical redesign of its mobile application, which not only includes this new, brightly colored app icon but also a revamped user interface that does away with color in favor of a black-and-white look and feel.
As it turns out, it was.
Instagram’s interest in updating the icon was to better reflect how its community has changed over time.
“When Instagram was founded over five years ago, it was a place for you to easily edit and share photos. Over those five years, things have changed,” says Ian Spalter, Instagram’s Head of Design. “Instagram is now a diverse community of interests where people are sharing more photos and videos than ever before, using new tools like Boomerang and Layout, and connecting in new ways through Explore.”
The new icon, however, still references Instagram’s history with its now simplified and softer camera that appears in the much more colorful design.
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In addition, the colors that blend and blur from purple to pink to orange and yellow are also supposed to reference Instagram’s iconic rainbow in its older design. (This isn’t entirely obvious, but we can see how the designer would want to make that connection.)
Meanwhile, where Instagram’s icon is now filled with color, the app itself has had the color removed. Instead of using blue and white in the app’s chrome, the new black-and-white design allows the color in the app to come from the community and what’s being shared. The user interface is no longer competing for attention.
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Though this design change will impact users the most, given it’s the app that’s actually interacted with on a regular basis, it somehow feels less jarring — at least, initially — than the change to the app icon.
Perhaps that’s because nothing has been fundamentally changed with regard to the app’s workflow. The buttons remain in the same positions, and pops of color are still shown to highlight things like notifications, for example. And there are some slight under-the-hood changes. For instance, Instagram now uses standard iOS and Android components, fonts and patterns. But the app itself is simply a cleaner, more modern version of the Instagram we know and love.
That’s not to say it doesn’t take some getting used to. Seeing the editing tools laid out in black-and-white simplicity will prompt a double take the first few times you use them. But the process of using the tools has not been changed.
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However, the icon’s update feels as dramatic as iOS 7 once did when Apple’s Jony Ive unveiled the operating system’s newer, flatter look-and-feel and its brighter color gradients. This initially prompted some user backlash among Apple fans who had trouble adjusting. (Remember the Jony Ive Redesigns Things Tumblr, anyone?)
What’s funny is that the iOS revamp years ago eventually prompted Instagram’s user base to call for the company to update its look as well. The older app icon began to feel out of place on the iPhone home screen, as other app icons were updated to better fit Apple’s new design language.
Then, when Google rolled out its own take on flat design with Material Design, Instagram’s icon began to feel a little out of place there, too.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][vc_single_image image="8203" img_size="500x200" alignment="center"][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Besides the icon change and black-and-white revamp, Instagram’s larger suite of apps, including Layout, Hyperlapse and Boomerang, have also received new icons. These new icons now better reflect what their app does in some cases. For example, the collage maker Layout has gone from a square to a grid. They also now match the new Instagram icon’s color scheme.
Instagram has been working on this redesign since last summer and ended up testing more than 300 icons before arriving on a lead candidate in late November. The company then worked on the user interface update, which had been tested internally since the beginning of the year.
Those tests finally made it out into the wild in the past couple of weeks, which is when users spotted them and the news of the redesign was leaked. The company doesn’t share details on its internal tests or how the changes impacted key metrics like user engagement.
However, with 400 million users worldwide who share more than 80 million photos and videos daily, it’s not likely that the company would roll out an update of this magnitude if it were worried the changes could negatively impact any of its numbers.
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How Microsoft is Empowering a Modern, Sustainable Workplace
Since joining Microsoft in 1991, the only constant for Bev Hess has been a remote workstyle. Bev started her career as an account rep based in St. Louis, often logging thousands of miles in the car or flying to client sites or meeting with customers over the telephone. She’s held a number of roles in the field, eventually rising to sales management and then pursuing a passion to empower others with better technology, first as a loud voice in the field and now managing a large global team as part of the Microsoft IT organization.
Today, Bev rarely sees many of her 139-person team in person. Her typical day starts with a mere 30-second commute to her home office in California, more than 1,100 miles away from Microsoft’s corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington. But she’s also connected and productive wherever she may be, whether out walking the dog, running errands, or even training for an upcoming triathlon. She appreciates having the flexibility to blend life as a mom with the challenges of building long-lasting professional relationships and running a high-performance team at one of the world’s largest technology companies. For her, life couldn’t be more balanced.
For Bev, “Skype for Business is my #1 tool. It’s how I start and end my day.
Skype for Business is now the norm for getting things done
Skype for Business has become the equalizing force that is changing how we work. It is not only helping to reinvent productivity, but also helping to decrease the need for commuting and business travel, which is good for our people, our business and the planet.
While Bev has always been successful as a remote employee, she says “I get a lot more done today.” In the days of audio-only tele-conferencing and conference room meetings, meetings would often start without her and “I’m sorry you can’t see this” was an all-too-common apology. These days, Skype for Business has become the norm for how work gets done at Microsoft. And many people meeting her for the first time over Skype don’t know that she—and most of her team members—aren’t in a corporate office.
Skype for Business combines audio and video conferencing, instant messaging, and screen sharing into one app that works on any device. Meet collaboratively one-on-one or with hundreds of people, or broadcast meetings to thousands of people.
Today Bev can’t imagine working without Skype. She hires people over Skype, conducts people reviews over Skype, and even occasionally fires people on Skype. “If someone isn’t comfortable getting hired without meeting their manager in person, they simply aren’t a fit for my team.” This way of doing business has also helped her to retain great people that needed to change location or workstyle—all while empowering them to be just as effective as they could be in a corporate office. For example, she recently hired a young data scientist in France that has lectured at MIT and is considered a rising star in her field.
“I think the Microsoft work culture and technology environment is what has enabled me to attract such exceptional talent.”
All told, Bev’s team is spread over 23 countries. To accommodate team members in various time zones, her workday commonly spans from 5 AM to 10 PM, though she hardly notices. She benefits through a flexibility to interweave her professional and personal lives, and Microsoft benefits by getting twice the availability of a typical 9–5 office worker. She also works to be open and available and sets aside time each week as open “office hours” for her team to drop by virtually via Skype and talk about anything.
Her team represents a perfect example of the modern workplace. While some of her team work in larger offices, many others work in remote or satellite offices with only a handful of employees. Others telecommute from rented office or flex space in their local city. And others, like Bev herself, work on the go, making their home or a hotel room their office. Regardless of where they are, Skype for Business is the equalizing force that empowers every team member to be productive whenever and wherever they may be, helping Microsoft realize greater value from its workforce.
85 percent of Bev’s team—including Bev herself—is located outside of Redmond.
A sustainable way of doing business
At Microsoft, we’re committed to demonstrating environmental leadership. In 2012, we made a commitment to become carbon neutral across our operations, including data centers, development labs, offices, manufacturing, and business air travel. We see Skype as an important component of our environmentally responsible operations and as a catalyst for reshaping how business gets done in the future—at Microsoft and around the world.
For example, many of our people now attend town meetings, our annual Company Meeting, and large conferences virtually. Skype has provided globally-distributed teams the ability to meet more often and more conveniently, helping people stay more connected and also increasing the speed at which we do business.
Skype has also afforded more frequent customer contact, helping lessen the need for on-site travel by our sales teams. Virtual meetings and demos of solution capabilities help ensure sellers remain responsive to our customers’ needs and include all stakeholders, regardless of where they may be. When Bev thinks back to her time as a seller, she sees a night-and-day difference between how she worked back then and how our sales teams work today. “Skype is the catalyst that is enabling us to adopt a more sustainable way of doing business without sacrificing the strong relationships we desire with our customers,” she says.
As virtual meetings become increasingly commonplace, people are spending less time commuting to work and are flying fewer miles to attend remote meetings and events. This reduced need for travel is helping us avoid carbon emissions, which is both good for the environment and good for business. Additionally, as more of our employees work remotely, Skype is effectively helping us to minimize our office space and the emissions associated with our buildings. In fact, the Global e-Sustainability Initiative’s (GeSI’s) SMARTer 2030 report estimates that virtual meetings and working remotely could reduce commuting globally by up to 53 percent and reduce the number of business trips by car or plane by 80 percent by 2030, potentially saving 165 billion liters of fuel from transportation.
Transforming enterprise IT
Skype for Business is an important enabler of a more sustainable way of doing business, helping us to reduce emissions from business air travel as well as emissions in our private data center. For example, as we shift from managing communications in our own facilities to a fully cloud-based Skype for Business environment, we expect to reduce associated data center emissions by 30 to 60 percent per user.
Moving to an IP-based collaboration environment also provides us with an unprecedented ability to analyze and manage our communications infrastructure. Bert Byerly is the Skype for Business service engineer for Microsoft IT and constantly monitors the environment, watching for trends and working to constantly improve service levels. “Reliability is at an all-time high, with call quality now at more than 95 percent,” he reports.
Final thoughts
As Bev thinks back to just how much Skype for Business has helped transform Microsoft into a modern, sustainable workplace, she’s excited to see the role Microsoft is playing in the world, both in empowering people and businesses and helping to reduce carbon emissions with technology.
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Join guest speakers, Forrester Research Vice President and Principal Analyst James Staten and Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich, for a discussion on why enterprises are adopting the cloud and how they are doing so.
Managed Solution’s Team has the experience and expertise to architect Azure solutions tailored for your environment. Call us at 800- 313-2109 or fill out the contact form and someone with get back to you shortly!
Download a printable PDF document on Microsoft Azure >> [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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Why Modern Business Turns to Blended IT
More and more companies are discovering the benefits of employing a blended IT workforce, which can benefit your company in a number of ways. Below are some reasons why modern business is turning to a blended IT workforce.
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CIOs are under pressure to boost business results and develop customer-facing applications.
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Hiring Managers and CIOs complain that they lack the kind of IT staff that drive business results.
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27% of modern IT and business leaders would remake their company's IT departments from scratch, according to a recent IDGE survey.
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Companies need to have deep expertise in all of the many technologies and tools available today.
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Full-time staff may not be equipped to tackle larger technology issues.
The blended IT workforce is becoming more and more popular because it involves utilizing a mix of full-time employees, independent contractors and temporary workers. This approach has resulted in increased productivity and decreased overall IT spending.
More Information on Blended IT >>
Contact us for more information on how to blend you IT team with ours
Managed Solution is a full-service technology firm that empowers business by delivering, maintaining and forecasting the technologies they’ll need to stay competitive in their market place. Founded in 2002, the company quickly grew into a market leader and is recognized as one of the fastest growing IT Companies in Southern California.
We specialize in providing full managed services to businesses of every size, industry, and need.
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