‘Max’ Seemingly Uses ChatGPT to ‘HBO’ Their Logo
J. Kim Murphy
They did it. Those crazy sonofabitches did it. The logo for ‘Max’, the artist formerly known as ‘HBO Max’, which was the artist formerly known as ‘HBO’, has come full circle. Max’s logo is now basically HBO’s logo from back in the day.
It’s not HBO, it’s Max — but the new standalone logo for Warner Bros. Discovery‘s streamer now certainly looks like HBO’s at a glance. The Max streaming service has quietly launched a fresh look, ditching its shiny blue user interface for a new monochrome color palette that, either purposefully or not, evokes the longtime branding of HBO.
Look, it’s fine. It’s not great, but it could be worse — far worse, even. I continue to take issue more with the ‘Max’ name — far too generic — than the logo, but whatever. Mainly this just reminds me that I still miss the old school HBO, where I knew that what I was watching would be good. HBO still has mostly good content — though I’m now slightly worried about the future of The White Lotus — but it’s buried in a bunch of other stuff included with Max.
The rebrand, which was updated on the service and its social media outlets Sunday morning, now matches Max with the same palette of the HBO logo, which may help consumers associate the two brands with one another. (Both Warner banners share the same CEO in Casey Bloys.) The new look also resembles the monochrome branding of Apple TV+, another streamer that is largely associated with mature programming. The palette will continue to be rolled out on marketing material over the next few months.
It definitely does recall Apple TV+ and so, the student has become the master (at least with regard to television content)! Overall, these companies are so funny with their subtle color tweaks — from Disney on down. Whatever will make consumers click on their apps more, I suppose.
“There’s different types of blue, and if you put us in juxtaposition to Disney or Paramount or Prime, they look different,” Spagnoletto said at the time. “With our blue and the way that the logo is designed, what we were going for is a combination of premium but accessible.”
Spagnoletto also acknowledged that, “Consumers will tell us if we got it right, and we think we did. But there’s enough room in the world of blue to still differentiate ourselves.” Now, just under two years later, consumers, or some other parties, have convinced Max that it may have not “got it right.”
That just leads me to wonder if WBD isn’t considering taking the entire brand back to ‘HBO’ and away from ‘Max’? Did they get that right? Maybe they should merge the entire thing with Paramount+ and call the app ‘Showtime’.
