Instagram gets a new monochrome look to focus on your media

After testing a black and white design with a few users, Instagram officially rolled out the look as part of its major redesign today. The idea is that the monochrome interface will put a greater emphasis on your photos and videos. Judging from the screenshots and videos, media does tend to stand out more now on its iOS and Android apps. Additionally, the company has redesigned its app logo with a simple, multi-colored icon that drops the original's skeumorphic design -- it only vaguely looks like a camera. Instagram also updated logos for its other apps, Hyperlapse, Layout and Boomerang, with a similar look.

"While the icon is a colorful doorway into the Instagram app, once inside the app, we believe the color should come directly from the community's photos and videos," wrote Instagram's head of design, Ian Spalter. "We stripped the color and noise from surfaces where people's content should take center stage, and boosted color on other surfaces like sign up flows and home screens."

I don't have access to the newer app yet, but the redesign looks like an intriguing one for Instagram. It hasn't done much to tweak the look of its apps for the past five years, so it makes sense for it to take some big leaps now. The black and white design feels much more mature, instead of something from a small startup that inexplicably became a giant social network.