Why London should be proud of Airbnb’s new “rude” logo

When Airbnb launched its rebranded logo in San Francisco last night, it knew it would get a fair bit of attention but it couldn’t have anticipated that the new logo would be trending at number one on Twitter for eight hours.

 

But is was. And why? Well, people think it’s a bit rude. And they’ve gone on and on about it ever since.

 

There's a very rude Tumblr account we couldn't possibly lead you to and lots of tweets. 

 

https://twitter.com/nomadicmatt/status/489650061895565312

 

https://twitter.com/amtaylor87/status/489754093552812032

 

But as they say, no publicity is bad publicity – and there’s hardly an internet junkie out there right now who doesn’t know the travel company has had a redesign. All eyes are on the company behind the work, an agency based near Old Street called Design Studio. 

 

We caught up with its founder to see what he makes of all the noise. 

 

“We’ve been overwhelmed by the reaction, Airbnb is an incredibly company, to be the company that rebrands them is an amazing opportunity and we knew there would be a lot of interest but we weren’t expecting quite so much,” Ben Wright told City A.M. 

 

The design is based on the idea of people, love, places and the A in Airbnb. Wright told us he had no idea the shape of the logo would inspire so many people to think of rude er, shapes. 

 

 

“No we didn’t see that coming. But it doesn’t worry me – it happens all of the time, the internet is a good thing, it enabled freedom of speech and there have been some incredibly creative reworkings of our design. That’s the magic of the internet.”

 

While us filthy-minded folks have been giggling about how much the shape looks like certain things, the rebrand has been well received in the design community. 

 

“I don’t think there’s been any bad publicity and design blogs as well as our peers have said they really like it – Kelly Hoppen tweeted about it earlier,” he added. 

 

 

Can’t argue with support from a Dragon.