The Drive To Develop

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In 2000, three friends set out to make their work easier by creating a tool that would remove mundane and somewhat inefficient tasks. This tool was called Renamer, and it had one job which was to rename things, a process now commonly referred to as rename refactoring.

Sixteen years later, and with nearly 600 more people, that tool still exists, does a whole lot more and is called IntelliJ IDEA. During this time, the company behind it has given birth to nineteen more products, expanding from providing tools for writing and maintaining code, to helping with application deployment and team collaboration.

It’s been a long and very pleasurable road. The journey continues, and it does so with a new look, and more drive.

Please welcome JetBrains’ new brand

Why Rebrand?

We believe in order to align ourselves with the fast-pacing technology of today, we needed to find a new modern look, something that differentiates us from our………actually, no. Let’s drop the nonsense!

Rebranding is expensive, exhaustive and more importantly has emotional impacts. In a company like JetBrains with very low staff turnover, where the majority of the people that started back in 2000 are still here, a change like this is never easy. And this is not to mention you, our customers, that know us and identify us by certain logos and products.

If we are to rebrand, there definitely should be very good reasons to do so. We believe there are, mainly two:

JetBrains is not a single product. IntelliJ is not a company.

JetBrains is quite a flat company and teams mostly run autonomously. We trust that in giving people the freedom to do what they want brings out the best in them. However, this freedom can lead to certain inconsistencies when it comes to logos, design, etc. and consequently having an impact on branding.

People know IntelliJ IDEA. People know ReSharper. People know TeamCity, but they don’t necessarily know that these products are from the same company, nor do they know what other products JetBrains offers.

As more and more developers move towards polyglot programming, we are there offering our users the same experience in our products and services. It’s time to consolidate that in our branding too, and we hope this new consistent look and feel will allow you to better identify us.

It’s not just about Developing with Pleasure

Consistency isn’t the only reason we’re rebranding. We’re the company that has been making tools pleasurable to work with. But developing with pleasure isn’t what drives us. What drives us is the belief in that there are better ways to do things. That every problem that arises should be viewed as a new challenge, an opportunity to improve, a chance to innovate. That’s what gets us out of bed every morning.

And this drive isn’t unique to JetBrains. All of us have our own drive, have our own ambitions, and many of us share the ambition to make our small dent in this world, making it better. We want our branding to identify us with you, our users, because we believe we have a lot more in common than merely wanting to work more efficiently.

This is our drive to develop. This is your drive to develop!

P.S.: Against any possible conspiracy theories that might arise, no, JetBrains is not getting acquired, it is not looking for investments and not preparing for an IPO. We remain true to our values and our customers, and continue as an independent privately held company.

Oh, and we’re not going all corporate on you, don’t worry!

The JetBrains Team