A New Mark for Glass

Since we launched Glass over four years ago, we’ve had one persistent design challenge. Our wordmark, a beautiful piece of lettering by Jessica Hische, has served us well. The issue? It was never designed to be an app icon. I loved Jessica’s script, and enthusiastically cropped the G from her original design. Suddenly, we had our first icon. But she never designed it for that use case and unfortunately, we've been fighting it ever since.

A few years back, Jessica graciously revisited the logo. She thickened the strokes and gave us alternate versions of the G, ones that held up better at small sizes. And while her work was incredible, it just didn’t solve everything. The icon still struggled at smaller scales, didn’t work well next to other social avatars, and sat uncomfortably alongside other app icons in a grid. My original sin couldn't be fixed by her immense talents.

Within the app’s navigation, it also didn’t translate well as a home button. We tried using an abstract interpretation of our photo grid as a workaround. Depending on the platform, it sort of worked. It made me smile. But let’s be honest, it was a head-scratcher.

So in my spare moments, I started working on a solution. I’m not one for redesigns unless they solve real problems, and I didn’t want to throw out the brand equity we’ve built around our original logo. We love our script. We’re keeping it. We’re calling it our signature and you’ll still see it in places like our footer, at the end of emails, and other future treatments where it makes sense.

But we also needed flexibility. Something that could serve as an app icon. A navigation glyph. A social avatar. A visual anchor that holds its own in a sea of icons.

Today, we’re introducing a new graphic element, a new primary mark that expands our identity while keeping the soul of Glass intact. You can visit our brand page to download the new assets for use on your website to show your love and to link back to your profile.

Internally, we’ve been calling it “Geographic”. It’s a nod to its modular, geometric construction. And well… a sort of dad joke that made me chuckle. Whether the name sticks publicly or not, we hope what lasts is how well it works; we want a logo that is simple, strong, and unmistakably ours.

It holds up beautifully as an icon and scales well at all sizes. Depending on how you look, it even forms a little abstract person inside the “G.” A quiet reminder that at the heart of our work, of Glass itself, is community.

We know visual changes can be jarring. It’s like someone rearranging furniture in a space you’ve grown comfortable with. So we’re trying to be thoughtful. While this new icon is the default, you’ll still be able to switch back to one of the older “G” icons in settings.

For Patrons, we’ve also created a fresh batch of alternate icons. Some are designed by me, and some by our good friend and icon legend, Jasper Hauser. You’ll find those in Settings → Appearance as well. We plan to keep adding to the collection over time. This new mark makes it a lot easier (and more fun) to get creative with variations.

We’ve updated the new branding across the app and site, but if you spot anything we missed, let us know. And of course, we’d love to hear what you think.

We hope you love it as much as we do.