Yelp is an American community review platform and business directory that publishes crowd-sourced reviews about local businesses. Its visual identity centers on a red burst-shaped symbol paired with a lowercase wordmark, an emblem the company itself calls the “Burst.”
Design and History
Yelp was founded in 2004, and its original logo was a cartoon speech bubble designed by YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley. That design did not last long. Founder Jeremy Stoppelman then tasked Michael Ernst, hired as the company’s designer around Yelp’s inception, with creating a logo more in line with what Yelp was to become. Ernst sketched roughly 100 ideas, including speech balloons, abstract shapes, and even a dog, before settling on the burst. He described choosing an asterisk-like shape as “a pop of discovery,” in lieu of the exclamation point that seemed to appear in logos everywhere at the time.[1][2][3]
Yelp’s design team later explained that the original logo was inspired by the star symbol that appears above characters’ heads in a moment of discovery in cartoons. That star represented the moment Yelp users made a new, local discovery, and the symbol evolved into Yelp’s iconic burst-shape logo.[4]
In August 2021, Yelp introduced a refreshed logo and a reimagined suite of app icons as part of the continued rollout of its modernized platform. The company said the refresh was intended to bring a more contemporary look while maintaining the fun, outgoing brand personality. The refreshed burst was refined with smoother, more geometric, and proportionate visuals, celebrating the platform’s legacy.[5][6]
Prior to the 2021 update, each of Yelp’s app icons used a different visual style. The Yelp for Business app used an illustrative approach, while Yelp Waitlist and Yelp Reservations used abstract symbols. Originally, 16 different colors were used across the four app icons; after the update, all four apps use the same two styles in consistent composition. The design team applied a red background to Yelp as the primary app icon and white backgrounds for the other apps to establish a hierarchy drawing attention to the primary app.[6]
Meaning and Symbolism
The burst shape is documented as representing a moment of discovery. Yelp’s design team stated that the original logo was inspired by the star symbol appearing above characters’ heads in cartoons at a moment of discovery, and that this star was representative of the moment Yelp users made a new, local discovery.[4]
Michael Ernst, who developed the mark that became known as the Burst, described choosing an asterisk-like shape as “a pop of discovery.”[2]
Typography and Design
In the 2021 refresh, the Yelp wordmark was completely redrawn from scratch, inspired by the original logo. According to Yelp’s design team, the wordmark retained the rounded quality of the original typeface but with more open counters and wider curves. The team felt that refining the wordmark helped unify Yelp’s existing brand elements and created a single visual language across the logo and app icons.[6][7]
While flat UI was the industry standard at the time of the 2021 update, Yelp’s design team chose a visually distinct 3D style for the app icons, describing the glossy, embossed, and rich visual language as a new style where the texture of the app icons feels tactile and fresh.[6][8]
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