Netflix rolls out brand new ident for all its original material

Streaming giant Netflix wowed fans across the globe this weekend just gone with the unveiling of a brand new ident which prefaces all its original content.

Anyone who decided to forgo seeing friends in favour of watching Jake Gyllenhaal’s fresh-out-the-cinematic-oven art-world thriller Velvet Buzzsaw will have seen the new addition to the Netflix visual family.

For fans of design, it might just be the most exciting Netflix-related news since the company began deploying a custom typeface developed with Dalton Maag back in March 2018. This is the first time Netflix has updated the pre-show animation in five years, and the reasoning – which forms part of a statement released on the company blog – is pleasantly understated. “Simply put,” Netflix says, “we’ve evolved, and wanted to update this signature brand moment to reflect the many choices our fans enjoy today.”

Retaining the brand’s signature application of a decadent red, but adding a whole rainbow of fresh colours – colours which, we’re told, are reflective of the “spectrum of stories, emotions, languages, fans and creators that collectively make up who we are as a brand” – the ident, eagle-eyed viewers will also notice, has a darker background now as well.

This is not, so the brand responsible for everything from Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat to Ozark says, just an aesthetic decision. Oh no – it is a way of “inviting you to get in the mood for an immersive, cinematic experience at home, on the subway or wherever you’re choosing to watch”.

Oh, and that aforementioned spectrum of stories looks a little like the video below…