Since Instagram launched their rebrand, there has been a predictable pattern of people dismissing all discussion of their icon as navel gazing decadence.

Instagram changed their logo!!!! THIS MATTERS!!!! IT MATTERS A LOT AND ITS HORRIBLE!!! -Real life people being serious — Philip DeFranco (@PhillyD) May 11, 2016

This type of ignorance is unfortunate when it comes from a layman. But when designers engage in this sort of anti-aestheticism, claiming it drags down the design community, it is completely self-defeating. Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering exposes where this position emerges from:

If you want your stakeholders to stop thinking design is only about aesthetics, stop reacting to the aesthetics of every new design idea.

Whether the news cycle is zero sum is a discussion for another day. But despite designers wishing to suppress criticism and downplay the significance of the icon, the company and its users clearly think otherwise. For my part, I intend to continue to take aesthetics seriously.

Icon History