Opinion BY Armin

The Internet Called, it wants its Hexagons Back

Based on the amount of tips I received about this, it seems we have a very healthy amount of harder-core developers reading Brand New than I thought. So for those of us whose knowledge of the web stops at “Add to Cart” here is the basic premise: First released in 2010 Node.js is a platform based on JavaScript to build websites or online applications that make the best use of connection times, only pinging the system when it needs rather than constantly. Or something to that effect. Node.js has a vibrant and passionate community around it of developers using the platform. Last week they introduced a new logo designed by Chris Glass.

We began exploring elements to express Node.js and jettisoned preconceived notions about what we thought Node should look like, and focused on what Node is: kinetic, connected, scalable, modular, mechanical and organic. […] Our explorations emphasized Node’s dynamism and formed a visual language based on structure, relationships and interconnectedness. Inspired by process visualization, we discovered pattern, form, and by relief, the hex shape. The angled infrastructure encourages energy to move through the letterforms. This language can expand into the organic network topography of Node or distill down into a single hex connection point.
— Node blog

Underlying grid.

The new logo has been getting a lot of flack both on Google Groups and Twitter and if you think Brand New commenters can fling smart-assed criticisms, developers can be downright cruel. Despite being a fan of Chris Glass and acknowledging that it’s easier for me to critique the work of a multinational brand consultancy than a very nice individual, this identity has a few too many faults. Using an hexagonal grid as the basis of the logo is maybe a fair idea, although a little antiquated, and it could have been exploited to create something contemporary but by sticking way too much to the hexagon shape, the resulting logo is clunky and looks more like an identity for Wrench, Inc. than a twenty-first-century programming language. There are simply too many hexagons on the logo: there is the “o” hexagon, the thingie in the “e” hexagon, the “js” container hexagon, and a desktop pattern with a bunch of pulsating hexagons. It all amounts to hexagon fatigue.

Unfortunately none of the traits of Node.js — “kinetic, connected, scalable, modular, mechanical and organic” — are captured here. This would have been a great project to explode an identity that is all those things, rather than contradict.

Thanks to Hayden Chambers for first tip.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners