Engadget is a technology news and review publication launched in 2004, covering gadgets, consumer electronics, and digital culture. The site’s visual identity has undergone a significant evolution, most notably in 2013 when the publication introduced a redesigned logo alongside a major site overhaul.
Design and History
In November 2013, Engadget announced a dramatically simplified new site design and a fresh logo to accompany it. The redesign was led by Ryan Block, Engadget’s Head of Product and Editor Emeritus, along with his long-time design partner Mike Cosentino, and identity designer Gino Reyes. The three worked together over several months to capture the essence of the classic Engadget brand while refining and simplifying it. The new identity was designed to streamline the entire brand, creating clean, harmonious proportions and a system of consistent geometries. According to the announcement, paring down many of the logo’s excess shapes made the mark dramatically simpler and far more balanced to look at. The team noted that the redesign was undertaken under a single premise: if they did not feel they could improve on Engadget’s identity in a meaningful way, they would scrap the project and keep the existing logo. [1]
The 2013 redesign was also reported by Chinese design news outlets, which confirmed that the new logo was designed by Gino Reyes together with the Engadget team. [2]
Meaning and Symbolism
The 2013 logo redesign used the mark as a metaphor referencing what the team described as the core of Engadget’s world: personal technology devices. The designers noted that just about every device in the world shares a common trait: a screen with hard edges enclosed in a body with soft, human-safe corners. This metaphor of machine and man, hard and soft, informed the smooth corners and sharply sculpted negative spaces of the letterforms in the new logo. [1]
Typography and Design
Engadget’s official brand guidelines describe the identity as a custom logotype that should never be approximated by retyping the identity’s text component. For headline and body copy, the approved font for reproducing Engadget editorial content is Guardian TextSans. The guidelines also specify that the Engadget logo is always optically centered based on the midpoint of the logotype. [3]
Brand asset databases list Engadget’s brand colors as including a dark gray-blue tone (hex #222A30) and a purple tone (hex #9A58B5), among others. [4]
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