The Official Charts rebrand aims to hit “sweet spot” between “Gen Z and nostalgia”

2022 marked 70 years of the Official Singles Chart and competition has never been fiercer for listeners. So it makes sense that the platform is becoming more digitally focused with a new identity and music platform created with Full Fat Things and Electric Mustard, as it seeks to stand up against the likes of Spotify. But the refresh also places prominence on its unique place in the current market, “as an antidote to the heavily personalised algorithm bubbles of today”, a release explains.

The new Charts platform sits somewhere between a chart website and a streaming platform, making for one of the deepest public music databases ever published. It includes a record of every hit that has ever charted and allows users to scroll through the chart from any week in history and find audio clips and video content.

The most immediate change to the visual identity is the new logo. The previous Official Charts icon, designed by Give UP Art, first appeared in 2011. It featured two interlocking arrows pointing upwards and downwards, with a ‘1’ hidden between the arrows. “There’s no denying how iconic the Official Charts logo has become,” says Electric Mustard. “The combination of the arrows creating a ‘1’ is clever, and although we made some slight tweaks, it was clear it was here to stay.”

The updated logo uses negative space to draw greater attention to the ‘1’, which could be easily missed within the previous iteration. The icon has also been rotated to the side, to align with the brand’s Number 1 Award.

Bright colours and impactful typography is the name of the game elsewhere. “We wanted the brand to be more open, characterful and inviting,” says the studio. “One of the main aspects we wanted to evolve was the colour palette and typography. The primary colours of cyan and magenta are great for print, but in a digital world, they felt dated.”

The new colour palette consists of cobalt blue, pink and off-white. The old compressed typography, which the studio describes as “feeling too business-like and stuffy”, has been replaced by Graphik.