Ehh, it's ok. Everyone wants to be lowercase, round and blue. Casual/fun, approachable and trustworthy. However I think they should have changed their branding a long time ago.
Mrs. Eaves wasn't exactly trendy, so they changed to some weird almost slab serif that never did it for me. It was almost like Clarendon, but felt a lot cheaper. Clarendon works fine as a word mark in older companies like Wells Fargo, Sony, and national park signage—but it doesn't invoke the sense of casual, youthful fun one should get from a newer company in the relatively new market of streaming music. This, combined with their stodgy UI/UX made it stand out even more as the oldest streaming music service. And don't get me wrong—Clarendon is one of my favorite type faces, and I even chose to write a short paper on it with a specimen book in college. But like I said, their old mark always made me think of a cheap knockoff of Clarendon. They somehow managed to carry forward the old age of the slab serif without the classic beauty of the letterform.
I do like the idea of using the "P" as a graphical container. It's something they can use in many places alongside varied imagery without it looking awkwardly placed. I'm just not sure if the shape is strong enough to be recognizable over the short term. As for the word mark, at least using a more geometric type face works better with the rounding off of the descender on the "p" letter and the ascender on the "d" letter. The main problem is that this style is popular, so it will tend to blend in with the crowd and become a bit more generic. Furthermore, the rhythm of the letterforms across the mark are almost too uniform. The "r" letter helps to save it somewhat, but the result is still quite—well—bubbly?
Mrs. Eaves wasn't exactly trendy, so they changed to some weird almost slab serif that never did it for me. It was almost like Clarendon, but felt a lot cheaper. Clarendon works fine as a word mark in older companies like Wells Fargo, Sony, and national park signage—but it doesn't invoke the sense of casual, youthful fun one should get from a newer company in the relatively new market of streaming music. This, combined with their stodgy UI/UX made it stand out even more as the oldest streaming music service. And don't get me wrong—Clarendon is one of my favorite type faces, and I even chose to write a short paper on it with a specimen book in college. But like I said, their old mark always made me think of a cheap knockoff of Clarendon. They somehow managed to carry forward the old age of the slab serif without the classic beauty of the letterform.
I do like the idea of using the "P" as a graphical container. It's something they can use in many places alongside varied imagery without it looking awkwardly placed. I'm just not sure if the shape is strong enough to be recognizable over the short term. As for the word mark, at least using a more geometric type face works better with the rounding off of the descender on the "p" letter and the ascender on the "d" letter. The main problem is that this style is popular, so it will tend to blend in with the crowd and become a bit more generic. Furthermore, the rhythm of the letterforms across the mark are almost too uniform. The "r" letter helps to save it somewhat, but the result is still quite—well—bubbly?
