Medium’s New Symbol is Saving the Bees. But Shh. Don’t Tell Ikea
Has the designer ever heard of Google?
Have you heard the buzz about Medium’s symbol?
It’s not new. Only new to you. You know, like when you thrift.
Except in thrifting, the other person gave the thing away. Like that one time I stopped at the thrift store and got an amazing plant stand. For five bucks!
But it’s okay, because obviously the original owner didn’t want it anymore. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
I’m just not sure it works that way with logos?
Medium wrote an entire piece about it.
When I first saw it, I thought the site was broken. Because, the dots were over on the right hand side, where my profile and notifications usually are.
I hit refresh a couple times cussing at Chrome and computers until it dawned on me that it wasn’t a loading error and Medium did that on purpose.
Then I saw the article by Medium, explaining it’s an ellipsis. There’s even a handy dandy animation showing how it works.
What they forgot to mention…
The Medium post about the symbol has a great big old description of all the concept work that went into creating it. It’s a long 6 minute explanation.
They didn’t mention that they re-invented the wheel. Or the logo, as it were.
See?
Note: I won’t take credit. Ayo Suber mentioned it in the comments.
Apparently, Medium’s new logo is saving the bees
Because then Roz wrote about it, and linked to beehome.design so we could all see for ourselves.
I like bees. Mostly, because I like to eat. And as they explain:
a third of what we eat depends on these busy, buzzing insects and other pollinators.
Also? Not all bees make honey. Solitary bees don’t. They just buzz around, pollinating things for us. Food and flowers.
A single solitary bee can pollinate as much as 120 honeybees can. Like, super pollinators.
So Ikea teamed up with Space10 to create beehome.design. So that average people can offer a home to those “solitary” bees right in your back yard.
And you don’t even need to worry about the hazmat suit because there’s no honey to worry about harvesting. Just a little home for the solitary bees that don’t make any honey and pollinate our plants for us.
It went online just this spring. You can see their site as of May at archive.org
And, apparently, Medium is now helping save the bees.
I truly hope all the “buzz” is putting bee homes in more backyards. Pun intended. Sorry!
Because we need the bees. Just don’t tell Ikea about the logo, okay? Somehow, I don’t think they’d be happy about it. Even if it sells bee homes.
Here’s the part I don’t get.
Has the designer never heard of Google?
That’s the part that confuses the heck out of me.
I do design and marketing. And I have to promise you I would not do hours of work and animate that puppy, too, without first doing an image search.
Just to be sure. You know?
In every step of business, there’s just stuff you do first. Like… — you don’t register a business name without doing a trademark check. — You don’t write health product copy without knowing what you can’t say — You don’t use photos that you don’t have the copyright to
Know what I mean?
And you kind of don’t get to just reverse someone’s logo and call it yours. Can you imagine?
I mean — has the designer never heard of Google images?
I suppose there’s another alternative… Maybe Medium is part of Ikea? Or Space10? Or they don’t read their comments, so they don’t even know?
2 more things I keep wondering...
— Ayo, how on earth did you find that so fast? — Has anyone bought a bee home? (please say yes)
