Bitwarden is an open-source password manager founded in 2016 by Kyle Spearrin, who launched the first version as a Chrome extension and mobile app that year. The company’s visual identity centers on a shield mark, which the official brand guidelines describe as the product icon, available in both rounded and square versions at multiple sizes. The shield also appears within the full logo lockup, which pairs the icon with a lowercase “bitwarden” wordmark.
Design and History
The Bitwarden logo has two approved compositions: a horizontal lockup, which is the primary and preferred version, and a vertical lockup for cases where the horizontal arrangement does not fit. The official brand guidelines specify clear-space rules for both: the horizontal lockup requires one Bitwarden shield width of spacing on every side, while the vertical lockup uses the height of the “X” in the logotype as its measurement unit. [1]
Bitwarden’s brand repository on GitHub serves as the canonical source for logo assets, including SVG logos, PNG product icons, and the shield mark itself. The repository also documents that “Bitwarden” should only appear in all lowercase inside the official logo lockup, and that the “W” in Bitwarden is never capitalized. [2]
Individual products under the Bitwarden umbrella, such as Password Manager and Secrets Manager, have their own logo lockups. These are used primarily in-product and selectively in diagrams when multiple Bitwarden products are being showcased. All other brand styles, including colors and typography, remain consistent across these product lockups. [1]
In 2020, Bitwarden released version 1.44.0 of its clients, which included “branding updates to new color scheme” alongside other changes. [3] A community forum thread from July 2020 also confirms that the shield was the official logo at that time, with a Bitwarden representative stating “The shield is our official logo (it’s close, but different)” in response to a comparison with a macOS system icon. [4]
Meaning and Symbolism
The official brand guidelines do not provide an explicit symbolic interpretation of the shield mark. However, the shield functions as the product icon across Bitwarden’s applications, and the brand guidelines describe the rounded radius system as one of the large frameworks for the brand foundation, tying communications together in one unified visual identity. The radius system is based on the rounded corners of the Bitwarden logo mark and the shapes of the brand typeface. [1]
Typography and Design
Bitwarden’s brand guidelines identify DM Sans as the brand typeface. The guidelines describe it as a friendly and characterized typeface that is less saturated on the web, with circular bowls that give text an approachable nature and tie into the rounded identity system proposed for Bitwarden. DM Sans is an open-source Google font, described as a low-contrast geometric sans serif with a large family of weights, intended for use at smaller text sizes but also suitable for larger scales. [5]
The brand color palette centers on Bitwarden Blue, identified in the brand repository as the primary brand color with the hex value #175DDC. The repository also lists Deep Blue (#0C3276) as a secondary color, Off White (#F3F6F9) as the default light surface, True Black (#000000) for text on light surfaces, and Teal Highlight (#2CDDE9) as an accent color. Tertiary colors, including Green, Yellow, and Red, are to be used sparingly, primarily in product graphics and for success, warning, and error communications. [6]
The brand guidelines also specify a 36px radius system for rounded corners across primary brand surfaces, with buttons as the only exception. Buttons instead use a corner radius of 50 percent of the button height to achieve a pill shape. [1]
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