Pandora rebrands to reflect personal music experiences
Competition among the streaming music services is fierce, so keeping on top of listeners’ preferences and appealing to their desires is highly important.
Pandora has had its ups and downs over the last decade, but its first rebranding in 11 years looks to be a step in the right direction to help it stay competitive. It comes at a time when the streaming service recently announced new products for its ad-supported version and launched a new paid version, Pandora Plus.
Pandora launched its new look and feel as it continues its transition from internet radio app to an on-demand music streaming service under Pandora chief executive and co-founder Tim Westergren. The company’s creative director, Julie Scelzo, according to a story in Fast Company, was tasked with coming up with the new branding to “enhance your Pandora experience and help bring your music to life,” as Pandora’s vice-president creative services, Tony Calzaretta said in a blog post on the company website.
The new branding is a welcome visual departure from the familiar, if unspectacular, standard text 'P' on its app button. The new 'P,' with a thicker text and a fading blue color wash, reflects a new logo, with a more vibrant scheme, that has been rolled out and will signal a “fresh new look and feel coming to web and other devices over the year,” said the blog post.
Scelzo told Fast Company that the new logo went through over 1,000 iterations before the new one was finally announced. The initiative for the new look was for the company to develop a design language that was able to present what music looks like.
What the design team decided was that music doesn’t look like one thing and that it could be colorful, so they made a promotional video and artistic iteration that goes through many colors, styles and moods while staying true to the new “P” branding.
“Our new look embraces the dynamic range of sound and color, visualizing the energy and emotion that artists pour into the creation of music, and that we feel as listeners. Our dynamic brand is composed of form, color and pattern, which we implemented into the new P icon and serves as your portal into the unique and diverse range of music you love,” said Calzaretta’s blog.