Lyft simply bought a brand new brand, however you in all probability didn’t discover it.
Over the previous few weeks, Lyft has quietly rolled out an up to date brand, broadened shade palette, and customized typeface on its app and throughout its social media platforms. The brand new look, designed by the branding studio Koto, is supposed to function a pure development of the model’s present identification, injecting it with a delicate increase of construction and maturity.
In keeping with Arthur Foliard, Government Artistic Director at Koto, the adjustments come at a “pivotal second” for Lyft, which is presently testing out an growth into autonomous driving and slowly gaining on its major competitor (and dominant trade participant), Uber. In an interview with Quick Firm this Might, Lyft CEO David Risher famous that, since he joined Lyft in 2023, the corporate has introduced its market share within the U.S. from 26% to 31%.
Lyft’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it new look follows in a latest pattern of bigger manufacturers, like Walmart and Adobe, skipping the “huge rebrand” that dominated the branding world a number of years in the past in favor of understated-yet-practical refreshes.
Lyft’s earlier brand (prime) and new model (backside) [Image: Koto/Lyft]
Lyft’s new look
Lyft’s new identification subsequent to its outdated is a bit like a sport of spot the distinction. However one key element within the brand instantly jumps out: The playful path connecting the f and t characters has been severed.
“The Lyft brand is without doubt one of the most recognizable in tech, so we approached it with quite a lot of care,” Foliard says. “The unique had a ton of character, however it wasn’t optimized for the way in which the model reveals up right this moment, particularly in smaller, digital contexts. The ligature between the ‘f’ and ‘t’ particularly triggered legibility points and generally felt overly stylized.”
[Image: Koto/Lyft]
To protect the visible cues that make Lyft’s brand recognizable, Foliard’s workforce broke up the ligature however saved the spirit of the mark’s swooping, daring letters the identical. Moreover the newly separated f and t characters, the remainder of the emblem has been simply barely slimmed down and realigned.
“We adjusted the burden, spacing, and proportions to make the wordmark really feel extra assured and up to date, much less decorative, extra intentional,” Foliard says, including, “The result’s a brand that feels mature with out being chilly. It nonetheless has that signature Lyft attraction, however now it holds up wherever it seems, from app icons to automotive decals to nationwide campaigns.”
That target versatility was additionally utilized to Lyft’s shade palette and typography. “Lyft Pink,” the corporate’s signature shade of neon purplish-pink, has been given a extra targeted position. Whereas Lyft Pink was beforehand used extra wholesale throughout the branding, Koto constructed out an accompanying palette of off-whites, deep pinks, and neutrals to maintain the intense hue reserved for crucial moments of the model, like the emblem.
[Image: Koto/Lyft]
One function of the branding that was solely overhauled is its typography. Foliard says Lyft was beforehand utilizing a number of useful typefaces that “whereas serviceable, didn’t fairly seize Lyft’s heat and humanity.” So, in collaboration with the kind design studio NaN, Koto’s workforce created a customized typeface for Lyft referred to as Insurgent Sans. It’s a classic-looking sans serif, obtainable in a spread of weights, that echoes the emblem with prospers like a half-smile form within the y character.
“We needed it to really feel prefer it had been made by individuals, for individuals,” Foliard says. “It options distinct humanist particulars—slight line weight variation, light curves, and delicate flares—that convey a way of the human hand into each show and textual content. Beneath all of it, it’s grounded in a extra geometric construction, giving it the readability and class wanted to scale throughout the model.”
[Image: Koto/Lyft]
Lyft will get the infant botox therapy
Lyft’s spruced up identification is the most recent in a sequence of comparable approaches from different main manufacturers. If the early 2020s had been the heyday of the foremost rebrand, and 2024 was the period of the dialed-back “model refresh,” then 2025 is presently seeing an much more minimal wave of branding child botox. This 12 months, a number of manufacturers have moved away from headline-grabbing overhauls in favor of small updates which might be meant to fly underneath the radar.
For an ultra-recognizable model like Walmart, this strategy is supposed to keep away from alienating the client by shedding an excessive amount of core model affinity without delay. In January, Walmart launched its largest branding replace in twenty years—an replace that, fairly than truly changing any property, as a substitute opted to easily spruce up the prevailing look with brighter colours and chunkier shapes.
Different manufacturers, like Amazon (which additionally labored with Koto on its brand touch-up) and Google, have equally rolled out new logos in latest months that might possible require a skilled eye to identify. In Might, Mom Design studio, which gave Adobe’s logotype a delicate facelift, encapsulated this pattern by explaining that its objective was to create an replace that “appears as if it’s at all times been there.” For Lyft, Foliard says, this new branding “wasn’t about altering who Lyft is,” however fairly about sharpening what was already there.
“The timing felt proper to strike that steadiness between evolution and preservation, guaranteeing the model might develop with the enterprise whereas protecting the guts and humanity that made it iconic within the first place,” Foliard says.
