Update: Khan Academy has a new logo!

I think the new logo is a bit nice, it will just take some to get used to, it looks like a plant, which is a good representation of growth and learning, which is what Khan Academy is. But why did you have to change the styling and color scheme? The old green one was really nice on our eyes, and the text colors are not really that great anymore, especially those in the "Subjects" menu.

I kind-of like the new logo change, as it represents growth and "building blocks". But what I don't like about it is how the color themes for each subject have been scrapped and replaced with a navy blue color theme. In my opinion, I liked the color themes that went along with the different subjects, and also would like it better if the logo could change colors with the corresponding subject color too. Just an idea. 

Hello! I'm Elizabeth, one of the designers at Khan Academy. I can provide some context as to why we adjusted the colors across the site.

We decided to remove the colors from domains because having different colors for domains doesn’t scale well to many subject areas. Furthermore, most of the colors we were using weren’t accessible, and we need to make sure our colors are visible to all of our users.

This doesn’t mean we’re making the site less colorful! This blank canvas will actually enable us to make Khan Academy even more colorful and whimsical in the future 😊. Right now, the Dark Blue headers are an interim state. In the future, we will be introducing more multicolor illustrations and multicolor icons. Here’s an example of where our visual style is going: https://khanacademyannualreport.org/.

Adding more whimsy and color is our next priority and this neutral background allows us to scale fun more quickly across Khan Academy! Here’s a peek at how our icons might look in the future. This is still a work in progress, but you’ll notice that now we can use multiple colors in one illustration.

I agree the logo is okay......
But I don't like the new colour scheme.
If you look in "Science and engineering"
The top bar is dark blue whilst everything else is pink.
The logo is okay but please bring back the original colour schemes!

I like the new logo, and agree with the reasoning behind changing it. In addition to the logo change reasoning, could the reasoning behind changing the colors be posted as well?

I'm confused by the removal of subject colors, they were very nice. The new dark navy doesn't seem to fit at all, especially for all the subjects across the entire site; it seems dark and menacing rather than bright and cheerful. I know the navy is used to match the logo text, but I don't see why the subject colors were removed.

Also, the blue header text certainly looks like a mistake in the launch, not to mention how dull the subjects dropdown looks now... it needs some color!

As a web developer, I take notice of modern and clean websites, I very rarely see dark colors used as the main color for a website, it's usually a mix of light and cheery colors....

Maybe the team is planning to improve the colors soon, but I'm just posting my initial thoughts.

I personally think that it's wonderful that Khan Academy is updating. While there are some things that I would change about the new design of the website, I am overall proud to be part of this awesome community, and happy that we are getting a fresh look. Thanks, KA!

I personally dislike the new logo. I wish Khan Academy would revert to the old logo and color scheme.

Because we decided to condense our color palette for scalability and accessibility, we had to eliminate the different colors for different subject areas. Unfortunately, this meant that we had to get rid of the different colors in the Subjects menu.

In the new design system, all links on Khan Academy will either be Blue or Black. The alternative here would be to have an all Blue links Subjects menu. We felt an all Blue subjects menu would be too overwhelming to scan, so we chose Black here instead.

We understand that it makes the Subjects menu harder to scan, so we're going to try and explore ways to make it better!

Anthony, yes! We are working on creating new avatars and characters to go along with our new system! Keep an eye out for them next year 😊

Wow ! you are amazing guys , developing gives us new spirit and increases our enthusiasm for learning  =)
the idea behind the logo is  so proper for your  mission =) but I think the colors in both logo and website are so dark . could you make it lighter  ?

anyway , thank you for every thing you have done 

I kind of like the new logo. But the design. Khan Academy used to have a more material-esque design to it and made it more unique from other superflat modern site designs. (e.g. Reddit) The blue is a little out of place but I think it looks relatively okay. Though it will take some getting used to. Another thing: why revolve a logo change around a new subsidiary app? The Khan Academy Kids doesn't seem to be the main "Khan Academy". Though I don't wholly support the change, I am fine with it.

As much as I and the community appreciate that Khan Academy redesigns to ensure everyone can use the website easier, the color choice isn't being received well. I do understand that the shorter range of colors is because some colors weren't accessible or visible to some colors, but for me the dark blue color seems depressing, not encouraging. I cannot speak for others, but I would appreciate it if we had an option to change the background color to white. 

I personally like the previous logo (a hand spreads out a lot of leaves, simple but meaningful). but, it's still KA, all good!

I really like this new logo.

I think it is nice and flat, modern, and beautiful, whereas the old logo was rather generic and I had never really liked the green color. I'll admit, at first I was disappointed about the color scheme, but after reading Elizabeth's posts, I can't wait for what they add next, including new avatars and flat design graphics.

I'm very glad to see Khan Academy's development team is still alive, because I really thought they were done making changes. This makes me feel very exited to see what's coming around the corner.

In short, I approve. 😉

I have noticed a lot of confusion over KA's odd changes in design, and I am confused as well. It was great just the way it was... was it?

I just found something that looks really awesome, which these changes are heading towards:

I think these are really awesome and KA should make their website like this. I found some other cool ideas they are designing after some research.

"KhanAcademy: The Blue Update"

I personally liked the other logo better. But its still khanacademy!

I like the logo shape (and the idea behind it), but not the color itself. Personally, I preferred the original color and design of the KA leaf, but this one isn't too bad.

Hey, just putting in my 10 cents, I am in favor of the new logo. I think it's sleek and modern, and honestly just looks more professional. I'm glad the graphics team is moving on and improving the site. So while I like the old, I welcome the new.

(And they're right about googling "hand-tree logo")

I love it. I had gotten attached to the former so initial reaction was missing the former, but color scheme-wise and shape-wise the logo goes really well together.

I like it, and I think it looks better than the previous logo.

Looks so fresh and versatile! Great job to everyone on the design team!

Here are my thoughts on this topic:

The New Logo

The new logo is much, much better than the old one. The old one isn't professional and doesn't scale well but the new one does. As Nicholas mentioned, the new logo has a nice representation of what Khan Academy is for.

@RAINE
Logos are not supposed to be used as wallpaper. Logos are to be used as a small icon in the title bar of the browser, and maybe in the header or videos.

The Design Updates

Personally, at the current state, what you had a few months back was better, with all the colors. Like most of you think, I agree with that. What I don't agree with, is reverting back to the OLD design which was from several years ago. That was a horrible design, with NO responsive design and the colors were very bland.

Now, as Elizabeth mentioned, if they are going to update the design to something that looks like this:
https://khanacademyannualreport.org/
I am definitely happy with it because it is very attractive, well designed, professional and idealistic for a web design. The white space averts attention from the background, and focuses the reader to the main content. Some people may say that white space is bad but it is actually very good and promotes. One of the most successful ads Apple released was the silhouette ads with improved their marketing. All the focus was on one thing, a silhouette. The rest of it was white space, or colored space. A counter argument may be, why not make the website have a colorful background? An entire background with color is not a good web design technique and is more idealistic for individual sections or images/videos rather than a website.

Overall, I like the new design (not the current design), and where it is going is even better.

Things KA Can Improve

Khan Academy still has many things to improve, which I will tersely explain in bullet points below:

• Video design... I believe that Khan Academy should improve the video designs from just a "scratchpad" and make more animations and introduce more fun characters for younger kids. Early Math videos may not be fun to watch, without a fun character explaining them the work, with fun animations as well. Everything should be printed text, and not handwritten. I am not saying Sal is bad, and I enjoy listening to him, but what I am trying to address is that younger kids may not be interested.
• Missions... I noticed a migration from missions to a new method of practicing, and other things like "course challenges" and "mastery levels." I love the change and the new design being incorporated, but missions are still very helpful for learning. I think they need to bring back recommended learning into the new system OR if they aren't migrating, update the design of the mission page, because it seems like that part of the website is not being maintained much.
• Computing Platform... The biggest issues are found in the computing platform. Almost everything is wrong about this platform... from Oh Noes (xD) to design issues. I will address some main issues... KACP is not being maintained. Why is the design lagging behind? For example, in videos, the design updates aren't fixed yet in the comments and some minor layout problems are happening. At one point, for me it wasn't even working. Next... embedding programs. When I try to embed programs I make into my personal sites outside of Khan Academy... problems happens immediately. For example, unnecessary, annoying and confusing scrollbars when you remove the editor. It has gotten even worse after the design updates. Finally, Oh Noes. Oh Noes is completely out of date, as if it is from several years ago (which it is). Several CSS functions doesn't even work such as animation-fill-mode. The editor doesn't support pre-processors like SASS which would be really helpful to teach students about a web development career. On top of that, KA disabled features from Processing JS like blurring certain objects, not the entire canvas. The live editor is not very clean and doesn't indent correctly. It would be nice if developers take some time to brainstorm and fix some of these issues.

That is all I have about the new design and logo.

How about that, Elizabeth posted before I did, lol! Thanks for the clarification, it really helps.

Proud to be a KA volunteer!

nice

By new do you mean that you're replacing the old ones?

The circle-outlines around the subject topic recently disappeared (about the same time the logo changed.)  I mean the outlines that show the approximate percent of completion.  These were very useful.  Could the staff please comment on why these are no longer enabled?

I agree with many other folks who think the new color is too unnatural. I'd like the "real" green one before. It was much more pleasant than this one. This feels cold. I major in computer science and I understand the points Elisabeth made but Jett Burns have said everything right. Depressing is the right word for the choosen color, thank you Addie for commenting that.

Why fix something which wasn't broken?

The new Font looks like a departure from the professional sort of look Khan Academy has always aimed for. Nothing wrong with that and in my opinion, it looks fine.

I hope this is part of a list of bigger changes because this isolated change feels really weird.

Hey there, fellow users!

I've noticed several of the latest posts have been saying that they dislike the new color schemes.

I originally thought the same, but Elizabeth Lin posted something that may help you understand a little better.

She says in the post that the bland color scheme is simply way for them to make a "blank canvas", so they can make even better color schemes and illustrations in the future.

I hope this clears some things up for you guys!

This is just brilliant stuff. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Hamid from UK