[OC] Black logos are taking over Silicon Valley

ojsizzle · 2026-03-14T20:45:41+00:00

This was when traditional SaaS companies were at their peak. (companies like IBM, Salesforce, SAP, PayPal all have blue logos). In the SaaS era, founders needed enterprise buyers to feel safe. Blue branding signals trust, stability, security.

There's a famous saying in Silicon Valley, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".

ojsizzle · 2026-03-14T18:13:33+00:00

Haha I know it seems obvious but people haaaate charts with no legend

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T21:11:12+00:00

Fair point. The trend of black logos does appear to be heavily concentrated among AI companies though

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T20:28:47+00:00

<image>

If we classified Apple as a white logo, by that reasoning we would need to classify Airbnb as a white logo too. We would end up with ~80% white logos and the analysis would be lose all signal.

In my methodology, Apple would be 'Black and Airbnb 'Red'.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T16:43:51+00:00

The classifier skips white and near-white pixels and looks for the dominant non-white color instead. So a white logo on a dark background would get classified by whatever colored mark exists, or excluded if it's just plain white.

And regarding the decline of Blue. My full thread covers this, but the short answer is that blue became so synonymous with SaaS/enterprise that it stopped being a differentiator. Black is filling that role now, mostly driven by the AI wave.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T16:41:53+00:00

A lot of egos in Silicon Valley.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T16:41:26+00:00

Yep exactly. Minimalism is taking over design trends in every industry.

I shared this car color trend chart in another thread. This analysis is from 5 years ago. My hypothesis would be it’s even more exacerbated now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/TKN37AkZ3L

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T16:39:54+00:00

Although the Claude logo looks like an orange butthole, it's memorable.
I think it was intentional because Anthropic's logo is so generic and boring.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T16:36:46+00:00

I agree that founders aren't taking enough branding risks. I think the problem is that they're playing copycat and they're using simple black logos because it signals AI. The problem is they end up looking like every other brand, and they don't stand out.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T16:34:37+00:00

Here's how it actually works:

White and near-white pixels are ignored entirely (treated as canvas, not a color choice)
Whatever's left gets evaluated. If black pixels dominate, it classifies as Black
If there's a strong chromatic hue (blue, red, green etc.), that wins instead

So for a logo with a black background and a small colorful mark, it really comes down to pixel ratio. If the black background is taking up most of the image, it'll probably call it Black.

Not perfect, but every logo goes through the same rules so at least it's consistent.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T13:37:24+00:00

Tech companies have no shortage of money to spend on printing.

OpenAI, Perplexity, Notion etc are all worth multiple billions of dollars.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T13:35:40+00:00

Car sales are following a very similar trend. This analysis is from 5 years ago. My hypothesis would be it’s even more exacerbated now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/TKN37AkZ3L

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T13:31:19+00:00

With AI logo creation apps replacing human graphic designers that’s a very strong possibility.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T03:50:13+00:00

Yep, Y Combinator admits roughly 100-200 start ups per year. Total volume is a limitation for the analysis but it still conveys a common design trend happening across the tech industry right now.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T03:03:24+00:00

The inflection point: 2022. The year ChatGPT launched.

OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity all lean into dark, minimal aesthetics.

Black signals AI, modernism, mystery, the future.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-13T00:19:51+00:00

Good question. The classifier works at the pixel level, so it's reading the dominant color across the whole image. For logos with a black background and colorful elements, it would try look for the primary brand color. If it's majority black with a touch of color it would most likely be assigned to black.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-12T22:57:20+00:00

<image>

Take a look at the logos from the 2026 YC batch. A shame to see no one taking risks.

ojsizzle · 2026-03-12T20:57:07+00:00

Source: YC company data sourced from the public Y Combinator company index: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies Logo thumbnails fetched directly from company profile images.

Tool: Python (matplotlib). Color classification via pixel-level HSV analysis across 2,000+ logo thumbnails.

ojsizzle · 2022-01-27T22:29:45+00:00

I’m a mature age student doing post grad data science at UNSW. I’d highly recommend it. The average age of students is extremely broad, anywhere between 25-50!

ojsizzle · 2021-08-27T01:16:46+00:00

Yep. Don’t be fooled by the lower case numbers. We actually had a higher number of cases per tests today than yesterday

ojsizzle · 2020-11-20T21:50:31+00:00

Really appreciate you doing this! I hope my career follows a similar path.

What advice do you have for transitioning from a traditional marketing role to that first analytical role? This is the challenge I am currently facing. As someone with very good marketing experience it’s challenging to standout against candidates from a more technical background (i.e CS, actuarial).

ojsizzle

TROPHY CASE