One of the most muted, blue and white brands in tech is getting a bold makeover. Dropbox wants to shift its reputation as a tool for productivity to a tool for creativity–and to get there, it’s debuting a new brand that even embraces a little millennial pink.
Dropbox’s original premise, when it launched in 2007, was that it was invisible. Rather than confounding people with confusing metaphors like “the cloud,” Dropbox offered simple online file hosting through a familiar token: another folder on your desktop. It was a simple digital box to store your digital crap. Its branding helped to explain the company’s then-esoteric technology through that simple metaphor: The logo that was a literal box, accompanied by all sorts of simplistic cartoons that explained the idea in pastel tones and line drawings.
But today, a decade after its launch, online file sharing is not just common, but commoditized. Dropbox as file sharing now has competition from a wave of bigger companies, including Apple, Google, and Amazon. In turn, Dropbox is shifting its own approach. Last year, the company launched Paper–an online collaboration tool aimed at creatives that looked toward the future of the company, which is said to be planning its IPO. And today, it’s rolling out a brand to match that new approach. Rather than being about storing files in a box, it’s about what you do with that box–and how people come together to make something new.
Every part of the new identity represents a mashup of two components. Within the app, in many screens, you’ll see illustrations that are a mix of line sketching and materials. So a cartoon alligator floats in the sky with a patchwork quilt balloon. These images are cutesy, but intentionally rough around the edges. The idea is that, if you’re working on something inside Dropbox, you don’t want to be surrounded by polished products. You want to see other works-in-progress, like your own.
For more down and dirty uses of the brand–quickly-producible banner ads, for instance–Dropbox will use templates in which typography-based frames are split into two parts, rendered in two different colors, with Sharp Grotesk depicted in two or three different weights. Again, it’s about the tension and unexpected harmony of mashing up two ideas, even though it’s all just type. “Even if we don’t have time for production, or space to execute, this will give the same feeling,” says Jitkoff of the typographical treatments. “They can feel like the other ads without being as complicated.”
“We wanted a system that would allow us to experiment, elevate over time, and interpret it through our lens,” says Robbs. “We had a big appetite for allowing us to work with this system over years and years, rather than have something we’d have to enforce like brand police.”