Slack has a new logo and it’s … fine

New year, new Slack.

The popular workplace chat app redesigned its logo, ditching the hashtag symbol and replacing it with, well, whatever this is.

The new design is rolling out now on all the service’s platforms. The company says it will also be redesigning other elements of its website, marketing materials, and “some places in the product” in the coming months to align with the new design.

While Slack’s previous hashtag-shaped logo was an iconic part of the brand, it “was also extremely easy to get wrong,” according to the company. 

“It was 11 different colors—and if placed on any color other than white, or at the wrong angle (instead of the precisely prescribed 18º rotation), or with the colors tweaked wrong, it looked terrible. It pained us,” Slack explained in a blog post. This resulted in the company using several different variations of its logo — its app icon totally ditched the hashtag symbol altogether, for example. 

The new logo addresses this with an icon that not only looks decent on different-colored backgrounds, but can more easily adapt to different platforms.  It uses the same four colors as the original symbol, but has a more flower-like shape.

It kind of also looks like four ducks, as one Twitter user pointed out.

As with any major redesign, Slack users on Twitter had lots of opinions about the new logo. 

Even Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield acknowledged the change will likely take some adjustment time.

But many others had a much more pressing concern — what does this mean for the plaid, Slack-themed socks the company has given out as swag over the years?

Turns out, there’s hope for new Slack socks yet. Whew.