Waze announced a redesign of its logo and a few other features today. The reason behind the new Waze logo is to spark joy, if that sounds familiar, it’s because of Marie Kondo and her Netflix show.
The logo is brighter and meant to spark joy instead of looking dreary. And also brings it into 2020. The old logo looked like something from the early 2010s (mostly because it was). But it also now follows (a bit more closely) the design of its parent company, Google.
Waze wanted to spark the joy of driving
Waze didn’t do this with just a simple logo change either. It is also allowing drivers to change their mood within the app. Using the same car icons that have always been available within Waze, but now they can be changed easier and more often. There are 30 different moods that you can choose from when driving, now.
With the logo, Waze didn’t really change the logo all that much. This is important for companies to do, because if they drastically change their logo too much, then customers aren’t going to recognize it.
The design is flatter, and happier in 2020 – even though most of us are not happy about 2020. The logo does still look very familiar, with a few minor changes. Waze made the character look like there are wheels on both sides now. And there are a few other things that have changed here, though pretty subtle.
The whole app now sparks joy
It’s not just the logo that was changed here, but the app as well. Though the app is still mostly the same, Waze did add some brighter and bolder colors to its latest design. The icons also have thicker black borders, which really makes them pop.
Waze did keep the same cartoon-style for the app, that it has always had. But for some people, that’s a good thing, as that is what they prefer. We haven’t yet seen what the whole app looks like, as Waze only shared some element images in their blog post this morning. But it doesn’t appear to be a drastic redesign, where things are in different places and so forth. So if you are a long-time Waze user, this redesign shouldn’t affect how you use the app at all.
Currently, the app on Android and iOS do not have these changes, and it’s unclear when they will get them, right now.
