Instagram changed its wordmark last week, and my 2 cents on this is that they've stayed true to their identity.

Instagram isnot just a photo posting app anymore. The way Instagram feeds are often curated now by brands actually goes along well with the new identity. The playfulness is still there, but it sits on top of something commercial and engineered. 

Moreover, the brand itself has become so recognizable that I feel at this point, the critics are pretty hollow in their feedback. Almost all of the criticism (and jokes) is about legibility, but legibility only matters while a mark still has to introduce itself. Instagram is well past that.

Everyone knows Instagram. Everyone recognizes Instagram.

They'll get used to the new typography just as they did with the logo mark upgrade 10 years ago, which was far more drastic.

This also goes to show that while logos and brand identities should reflect the value provided by the brand, there comes a point of recognition and success where it becomes the other way round.

There's actually a name for this. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute calls these distinctive assets rather than differentiating ones. A distinctive asset doesn't need to mean anything. It only needs to reliably trigger the brand in memory. Think about the swoosh. The swoosh doesn't communicate athleticism. It communicates Nike.

The catch is that this only works once you've earned it. Instagram can afford an ambiguous 'r' because billions of people re-encode that mark every single day, for free. Most brands can't fund that bet and for them the identity still has to do the describing work.