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🪩 Volume 148 | August 19, 2026

 

Okay, story time. A few weeks ago, a prospective client came to us wanting a rebrand. This is a celebrity-founded nonprofit with a VERY good mission (hoping to share more on this soon!), and they were CONVINCED the thing holding them back was their “look.” Burn it down, start fresh, make it shiny.

 

And we told them no.

 

(Well, more like we told them “not yet,” which in agency-speak carries roughly the same energy as a friend prying the phone out of your hand before you text your ex.)

 

Their brand system was already strong: good bones, clear identity, a bold palette and a voice that was very true to them and true to the nature of their mission.

 

Their problem wasn’t what they looked like, it was that nobody could find them, and the best stuff they'd built was buried three clicks deep where no human would ever dig. A new look doesn't fix that. It just makes the exact same problem wear a different outfit.

 

I've been chewing on that conversation for over a week now and then Instagram went and made my entire argument for me, on a slightly bigger stage (only ~3 billion people, no pressure). So let's talk about the right way, the wrong way, and the right TIME to touch your brand’s visual identity.

 

 

 

Setting the stage: Billabong-font wordmark (2010) → a redrawn version (2013) → the cursive script we've all stared at for years (2016) → a full decade untouched → a sharper, “hybrid” wordmark and a whole new brand system, dropped August 13, 2026.

 

Instagram head Adam Mosseri unveiled a refreshed wordmark (the text-only logo that spells the name) for the first time in about ten years.

 

Crucially: the camera icon didn't change. The pink-purple gradient square on your home screen is exactly where you left it (hooray!). What changed is the type: heavier, tighter, rounder, described by Mosseri as sharper and more modern while still nodding to the original. Under the hood there's a bigger system: three new typeface families (Instagram Sans, a handwritten "Pen," and a monospace "Mono"), with the gradient used more sparingly going forward.

 

And, look y’all, the internet did what the internet does. Within about an hour, people decided the new mark doesn't say "Instagram," it says "Instagzam" (the r closes up against the g, so your eye trips). I mean, fair??? That's a real legibility note and the print tests aren't kind to it.

 

BUT, after reading this It's Nice That interview they talk about this: the wordmark “modernises, simplifies, and elevates” while keeping the script DNA that always signaled personal expression. 

 

They built the core mark to last a decade AND built a system with room to evolve. Their whole philosophy on the inevitable backlash: You earn brand love, then you keep earning it; a new identity has to live in the world a while before people feel it as theirs. Or, as brand design director May Hartono put it: "playing it safe is a disservice to our community."

 

They evolved. The icon stays, the script stays in spirit, the new thing openly references the old thing. It tells the story of where the brand's been, how far it's come, and where it's going, all at once (so long as YOU’RE willing to look at it that way).

 

Now hold that up next to the cautionary tale. (PERHAPS you'll remember we broke this down last week in Vol 147.) One year ago this very week, on August 18, 2025, Cracker Barrel unveiled a stripped-down, text-only logo and deleted Uncle Herschel (the old man leaning on the barrel) from its identity entirely.

 

The backlash was nuclear, the stock shed roughly $94 million, and within about a week they sprinted back to the "Old Timer." They tried to delete a chapter, and the readers revolted.

 

 

Same category of decision (change the logo), opposite instinct. Instagram treated its history as an asset to build on. Cracker Barrel treated its history as baggage to shed. One of those is a rebrand. The other is amnesia with a design budget. Well-planned rebrands acknowledge where you've been while they point at where you're going, and they're timed for when the brand is ready to grow into the new thing, not when leadership is just bored of the old one.

 

For your business: Before you torch your brand, ask one question: is the problem your identity, or how consistently you're applying it? Nine times out of ten it's the second one. (And by the way, that's the far cheaper one to fix. My nonprofit friends up top know.)

 

 

 

Sarah and I were arguing about the new Instagram logo, so we did the only responsible thing and hit record. Masterclass, or “Instagzam”? The audio companion goes deeper on when a rebrand is actually worth the money, and when it's a very expensive way to recreate a problem you already had.

 

 

 

 

🍟 McDonald's is running an emotional heist (and you asked who's driving). Have you seen these McFlurry billboards? They're these mirrored diptychs where two nearly identical situations end in opposite ways, and both still land you in the exact same cup. "Game winner" / "Game whiner." Your team won 5-0 / your team lost 0-5. "She replied: 'I love you too'" / "She replied: 'Uh… thanks.'" Whatever the occasion (that is, word for word, the tagline), McFlurry. It’s so LOW EGO. The brand isn't claiming a McFlurry will change your life or heal your inner child. It's just admitting it will take LITERALLY any excuse to be there for you: good day, bad day, in-between day.

 

🌶️ B2B does not have to be boring, exhibit A. Meanwhile in the “who said HR can't be charming” corner, Hot Take HR's event booth [click for booth inspo/to have FOMO like me, and watch this one, too] has me SWOOOONING. This is a FANTASTIC EXAMPLE of taking a category that no one really finds “sexy” (I mean that’s an HR faux pas after all, right lmao) and turning it into something people actually want to be in on. Proof that personality is a distribution strategy, even at a booth at a conference. 

 

 

Sarah and I recorded a full audio companion to this issue; the deeper, how-this-applies-to-you-side version of everything above. Get it at the bottom of the Substack version of Funnel Cake here.