It’s not HBO, it’s Max – but the new autonomous logo for the streamer of Warner Bros Discovery now looks like a HBO glance. The MAX streaming service has quietly launched a fresh look, abandoning its brilliant blue user interface for a new palette of monochrome colors which, on purpose or not, evokes the longtime brand of HBO.
The brand change, which was updated on the service and its social media on Sunday morning, now corresponds to Max to the same palette of the HBO logo, which can help consumers associate the two brands. (The two Warner banners share the same CEO in Casey Bloys.) The new look also looks like the monochrome brand of Apple TV +, another streamer which is largely associated with a mature program. The palette will continue to be deployed on marketing equipment in the coming months.
A representative Warner Bros. Discovery did not respond to comment.
Black and white brand jump is not Max’s first aesthetic intervention. When Warner Bros. Launched the streamer for the first time in 2020, it was introduced on the market under the name of “HBO Max”, brandishing a Deep Purple palette. But after the film and television studio was spread by AT&T to merge with Discovery, Inc. in 2022, the new Discovery Warner Bros. Discovery announced its intention to change the brand.
The service relaunched like Max in 2023, integrating its library at Discovery + and exchanging purple tones for blue tones. In particular, the “A” in dotted lines in the middle of the Max logo spoke of another dotted logo vowel: the “O” in HBO.
At the time, CEO David Zaslav awarded the decision to rename the service to a desire to report a wider programming slate and to indicate to consumers that Max offered more than high -end television programs, largely mature produced by HBO. “Each household member (can) see what he wants at any time,” said Zaslav at the time, announcing the new name.
The company also highlighted the decision to go from the Violet brand image to the blue brand, with the CMO Patrizio Spagnoletto, then global, telling Adweek that the option was “the most appreciated color, universally”. (Spagnoletto left Warner Bros. Discovery in 2024.) Warner Bros. Discovery considered several other colors – including a possibility of sticking to purple. With the maximum recovery, the service has become one of the many banners with a blue brand, landing somewhere between the darker shades of Disney + and the light rockets of Paramount + and the first video of Amazon.
“There are different types of blue, and if you put us in juxtaposition in Disney or Paramount or Prime, they seem different,” said Spagnoletto at the time. “With our blue and the way the logo is designed, what we were going to seek is a premium but accessible combination.”
Spagnoletto also admitted that “consumers will tell us if we have understood, and we think we did it. But there is enough room in the world of blue to differentiate us again. ” Now, a little less than two years later, consumers or other parties convinced Max that he may not be “well understood”.
