Quora's original logotype was designed by Cuban Council, and served the company well since 2010. Quora's Communication Designer Holly Gressley and Director of Design David Cole contacted Commercial Type at the end of 2014 about the possibility of redrawing the logotype. Miguel Reyes and I worked on the project.

We started by identifying the main problems with the existing logotype:

1. The Q was very large, but the tail looked weak—too light and too small. However, the tail was very distinctive and had a lot of equity for the brand, especially because the Q was used so often on its own.
2. The serifs were very flat across the baseline, but the multiple angles across the x-height brought in a lot of visual noise. These didn't seem to harmonize.
3. The relationship between the terminals on r and a was strange. The angle was forced to line up, but the corners didn't line up at all, also adding noise.
4. The bottom bowl of the lowercase a was very heavy. This was the most noticeable of many issues of consistency with the stroke and serif weights.
5. The spacing was also very tight, which was okay at very large sizes, but made the logo look cluttered and harder to read at small sizes.

These are problems of drawing and spacing, and did not make the logotype fundamentally bad. Knowing that Quora had good brand recognition, Miguel first tried to fix these problems without fundamentally changing the design. Flattening out the serifs along the top proved to be too big a change, but the rest of the changes looked like an improvement.

Refinements aside, sticking with the original logo was not the timid choice that Holly and David wanted to make. Instead, we kept this aside as a backup plan in case their colleagues couldn't be convinced to make a bigger change.

First round

Holly and David provided us with a very complete brief of what qualities the new logo needed to communicate. A couple of things stood out in particular. Quora is collaborative, intellectual and utilitarian. According to the brief, “Two things we really value for our brand is that Quora is neutral and high quality. This should be reflected in the design of everything we make or do.”

With this in mind, we looked back to the three main genres of serif typefaces, focusing in on a particular example of each to draw on for the sketches. We delivered 20 sketches, all variations on these three themes.

Century Schoolbook, a Modern typeface that was indeed popular for textbooks through the 20th century, feels both intellectual and utilitarian. This typeface was designed by Morris Fuller Benton at American Type Founders in 1924. B1–B3 show variations on this idea. B1 is closest to the source, with bracketed serifs and higher contrast between thick and thin strokes. B2 has rectangular, unbracketed serifs and lower contrast. Miguel paid particular attention to the relationship between the ball terminals in r and a in both of these versions. B3 has slightly trapezoidal serifs and no ball terminals, for a more contemporary look.

B4 was based on Baskerville, first cut for printer and lettering artist John Baskerville by punchcutter John Handy in Birmingham, England in 1757. Baskerville’s work is held up as the standard-bearer for the Transitional [typeface] genre, more delicate than the Old Style [typefaces] that preceded it, but not as mechanical as the Moderns that would follow. Baskerville has been reinterpreted many times over the years, and is a very popular choice for book typography.

In 2012, filmmaker Errol Morris used his blog at the New York Times to run a small experiment on “the effect of typefaces on truth”, to test whether some typefaces are perceived as more believable than others by readers. The result was interesting: “But is there a typeface that promotes, engenders a belief that a sentence is true? Or at least nudges us in that direction? And indeed there is. It is Baskerville.”

B5 looked back to Caslon another popular and trustworthy book typeface. Though this is the oldest of the sources, Miguel’s clean and angular interpretation was the most contemporary of the sketches.

After review, Holly and David were concerned that B1–3 (Century Schoolbook) felt overly serious and too much like a textbook, implying a focus on science over all other topics. However, they liked the clean lines and the overall feeling of stability, and felt that the Q was very well balanced and could work well for the icon. B4 (Baskerville) was an immediate favorite, but the Q seemed to be too much of a departure from the existing logo, risking the loss of the equity they had built in the brand. B5 (Caslon) was too much of a departure from the existing logotype, and while the sharp, angular serifs were dynamic and elegant, they could also be interpreted as looking aggressive. Additionally, the reference to Caslon felt too literary and not utilitarian enough.

Holly and David looked at the logotypes as a whole, but also focused on the individual Q's, because the Q functions as an icon for the brand, especially in mobile apps. They suggested trying out a broken loop on the tail, to see if this might be a nice way to call back to the existing logo in the new design.

Second round

Baskerville had emerged as the clear winner. We explored different forms for the Q, both in the logotype (C) and in the icon (D), even testing whether the icon should stand on its own with a different form. We also tested out different amounts of contrast (E), to find the right balance between elegance and utility.

Final round

The final version of the logotype (F) needed just one round of revisions before we prepared it for implementation.

Some of the important differences and similarities to the original logotype are called out below:

1. The broken loop turned out to be the perfect solution, allowing the logotype to refer to the existing logo while moving forward.

2-3. The angled tail on the u follows the historical model, and keeps the baseline from looking too flat. It also made the tail on the a, also from the historical model, look more integrated into the word as a whole.

4. Flat serifs on the u and r make the logotype look calmer and more stable. The lowercase is considerably larger in proportion to the Q than it had been in the existing logo.

5. Special care was put into making the soft terminals on the r and a relate well. This is one of the most difficult letter combinations in type design, and it is not easy to make it inconspicuous.

Because Quora's logo is used in such a wide variety of sizes, we provided 4 different versions (G) for use on a white background, and 4 additional versions for knocking out of a dark background. The small versions are progressively wider, more explicit in their details, lower in stroke contrast, heavier in weight, and spaced much looser. The smallest version looks chunky and clumsy when scaled up to the same size as the largest version. (H)

Quora’s previous logotype served them well for five years, and we hope our new logotype lasts as long.