In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen two companies — Facebook and Logitech — take decisive steps towards the middle in terms of design approach. And like a candidate late in the election cycle trying to appeal to more voters, reactions are mixed. Critiques and comments across brand and design blogs range from “beautiful” and “a clear improvement”, to “I didn’t like the old one but this is worse”. A quick discussion with some of the designers I know resulted in a similar range of opinions. For me, do I like the redesigns? Sure. They’re more modern, certainly more of-the-moment. But, in reality, only one matters. Facebook, right? Wrong.

Logitech's new logo is meant to fit the business it is becoming

You see, Logitech’s redesign (led by DesignStudio, who also drove Airbnb’s – controversial – and OpenTable’s – less controversial – redesigns), seems to have been undertaken with a clear purpose in mind that extended beyond the halls of the company. For one, the company’s business has moved beyond its historic core of PC mice and keyboards. This alone is enough to justify evolving the logo and dropping the Picaso-esque eye drawing that sat beside the Logitech name in the old version. It served no purpose aside from being slathered all over mice and keyboards for a generation. Second, the new logo is designed to be shortened in support of a new product line, dubbed “Logi” and targeted at a younger, more mobile audience. It’s meant to give Logitech a heightened degree of freedom to straddle both older users and today’s up and coming mobile-natives. I imagine the argument for change went something like this: “Our current logo ties us to the past, and to move forward, our business needs to flex in two different directions. Therefore, we need to revise our logo to flex with the business.”

Facebook's refresh is an exercise in aesthetics

But, that’s not what happened at Facebook, where the argument was along the lines of: “Our old logo is old. We need it to be more modern.” I’m not kidding. According to Josh Higgins, Creative Director at The Factory, Facebook’s internal brand/marketing/advertising agency, “(the Facebook team) set out to modernize the logo to make it feel more friendly and approachable.” (via BrandNew). I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that Facebook was suffering from a case of old and stodgy so dire that it called for a change. More importantly, was there really no other reason to make a change, however minimal, to the Facebook logo? No moment in the business? No key announcement to support? Well, if that’s the case, then Facebook has real problems that a logo redesign isn’t going to fix. Quite frankly, I’m surprised the story even made onto the list of things Facebook’s PR team had time to communicate.

The point here isn’t to criticize the Facebook team as much as it is to highlight a much more important point: in the world of business, design doesn’t exist as an end of its own. Design, like accounting, product development, and every other activity of the business exists to serve the needs of the business. When marketing teams jump out and make changes without those changes being attached to some real, tangible and impactful business imperative, it’s a wasted effort and a missed opportunity. When a design effort is undertaken with a clear purpose in mind – to launch a new product, to highlight new features, to signal a change in corporate direction – it has an opportunity to help accelerate a business forward. The only way to do that is to ensure that all design matters is to make sure design is acting in service of the business: Our business needs to do ______. Therefore, our design needs to do ________. And this idea isn’t just isolated to graphic design. It applies to product design, ad campaigns, anything that touches a consumer. Change for the sake of change is really just a distraction.

Brand and design teams, whether internal or at outside agencies, that get this will never have to worry about being accused of doing work that doesn’t matter, won’t get asked to just make something pretty. The work they do will heralded not for moving towards the middle, but for moving things forward. And when it does, they’ll be asked to do more. Do work that helps, and you’ll get to help more.

Design that matters: Facebook vs Logitech