Instagram has updated its brand identity for the first time in a decade, unveiling a redesigned wordmark that has quickly become one of the most discussed changes to hit the platform in recent years. The Meta-owned company has left its famous app icon untouched, meaning the pink, orange and purple gradient camera symbol that appears on phone home screens across the world remains exactly as it was. What has changed instead is the text-only logo, known as the wordmark, that spells out the word Instagram at the top of the app and across the company’s official materials.
The redesign was announced by Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who shared the update on both Instagram and Threads and described the new lettering as sharper and more modern while still carrying references to the original design. According to Mosseri, the wordmark had gone unchanged for roughly ten years and had begun to feel dated, prompting the company to revisit its typography. Jasmine Probst, Instagram’s director of product design, said the new script style was chosen to preserve a sense of individuality and craft that has defined the brand, with the design team reportedly testing hundreds of alternative directions, ranging from all capital letter treatments to fully handwritten styles, before settling on a refined script. The new typeface introduces heavier strokes, looser connections between letters and a more compact, geometric structure compared to the flowing cursive style that Instagram introduced back in 2016.
The changes are most visible in individual letters such as s, g and r, and it did not take long for the redesign to attract attention online. Many users pointed out that the new lettering makes the brand name resemble the word Instagzam rather than Instagram, a comparison that quickly spread across social media and inspired a wave of memes and jokes. Reactions to the update have been mixed rather than uniformly negative, with some users praising the fresher and bolder look while others raised concerns about readability. This is not the first time Instagram has faced public pushback over a design change, since the 2016 shift from its original brown camera icon to the current gradient square also drew criticism at the time before eventually becoming widely accepted.
The new wordmark is not being rolled out everywhere at once and will instead appear gradually across the app, the company website and official branding materials throughout the remainder of 2026. Instagram has indicated that the broader visual identity refresh extends beyond the wordmark itself, with the brand introducing three related typeface families intended for different uses across its platform. For now, most users will primarily notice the change whenever Instagram displays its full name alongside the familiar camera icon, with the company signaling that this update forms part of a longer term shift in how its brand identity will look and feel going forward.
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