Ultimately, the team decided to retain the equity of Slack’s familiar octothorpe, retooling it to eliminate reproduction challenges and increase consistency across applications. Working with the creative team at Slack-and, naturally, using the Slack platform itself to collaborate in real time, Pentagram explored a wide range of possibilities for the new identity, from options that suggested connect-the-dots, complex knots, emojis and people-like shapes, to systems that celebrated the platform’s unique visual vocabulary. The update is the first significant change to Slack’s brand identity since the company launched in 2013 with a logo that resembles a hashtag, or octothorpe. The hashtag is an organizing element in the platform, signaling the beginning of the channels where teams can talk about individual projects. Pentagram worked closely on the project with Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield and the in-house design and brand team. The extended visual language introduces a more refined color palette but retains the brand’s playful visual personality.

Pentagram has designed a new brand identity for Slack that captures the software’s simplicity and ease of use, updating its familiar hashtag logo to work consistently in different scales and contexts. Slack is a collaboration hub that is changing the way people work and communicate, helping workers be more productive through a cloud-based set of proprietary collaboration tools.

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