This is tangential, and I'm not a designer so this is just one dev's opinion, but I found Dropbox's latest rebrand (dropbox.design) to be a bizarre departure for them. It was so off the wall I just assumed it was some sort of parody site until I realized it was official. I'm in no place to determine if it's "good" or "bad", but it's certainly an...interesting direction, if nothing else.
For my taste dropbox.design is borderline ugly. It is definitely not pretty. The colors look like they were picked in MS Paint.
https://www.dropbox.com is in the same style and I find it looks very unprofessional, even if it is targeted to regular users. It looks like an art gallery? https://www.dropbox.com/business on the other hand looks clean and trustworthy.
Dear God I can't believe they've gone and done that to their consumer brand. It inspires no confidence, the visual style actually overwhelms the content on the page to the point where the product itself and its values fail to be communicated. On mobile it is particularly bad. If I didn't already have an account, the website design might be enough to keep me from creating one of I land on that front page.
Ok, you got me, I have no idea how you're pulling it off. Some kind of silly hacker trickery must be the explanation, because there's absolutely no way that a company with such a long track record of tasteful design would intentionally put something that hideous into production. Right? Right??!
I didn't realize they redesigned the main page. Even putting the colors aside, the font itself looks terrible, like if they have bugged CSS or something.
I am print designer (not ui/ux startup designer) and most designers i know find the redesign sooo bad. It feels like they wanted to draw lot from fashion/art print scene (stuff like http://backcatalogue.co.uk/daily ) they picked similar typeface/style to one very trendy few years ago ( http://www.space-matters.com/ ) and well... they totaly failed.
Reasons might be ui/startup designers being pushed into territory they dont know. It might be management dumbing down "too cool" design. But overall it feels like strange hybrid without much energy or appeal.
Not a designer either, but I'm a huge fan - it's very Lichtenstein-y and Warhol-y - and it really feels like a labor of love. The flesh color and the Benetton palate are dope, and probably got a ton of pushback.
To me, it makes Dropbox seem like a place where people are encouraged to care about their craft!
Agreed - far too "Mad Men" looking in style, color, font choices, there's nothing about this that makes me think 80's.
The response from 'ordinary' users on Twitter has been tepid at best, I guess people just want their files reliably synced, rather than "inspiring creative energy" (Dropbox's word choice, not mine!).
The pinks and blues and pastel colors, coupled with the pictures cut in half or quarters and mashed onto other pictures has a very vaporwave feel. Go on Google Images and look up vaporwave and you'll see what I mean.
My first impression when the new logo appeared on my iPhone after an update was 'dropbox uglified' but after a few days the design is really growing on me, I now quite like it.
I loved it! It was very fresh and provides a great brand framework for dropbox moving forward. It'll evolve and pivot in lots of great ways, keep an eye on it !
it has a retro feel. It even feels offensive. I think it's great that they experiment, it's a step in the right direction from todays undistinguished flat and uniform designs with hard to read shades of gray typing. I hope this is a shift to more human and original web designs.
