The earliest Odnoklassniki logo was created by Russian designer and consultant Dmitryi Utkin in 2006, when no one could actually predict that it was to become one of the Russia’s largest social networks. Interestingly enough, Dmitryi Utkin was also the first user registered on the project.
Odnoklassniki is one of the largest social networks in Russia and neighboring countries, part of VK Holding. The platform was created in 2006 and today apart from Russian, it is available in 15 foreign languages. More than 40 million Russians use Odnoklassniki monthly to communicate with friends and family through messages, voice and video calls, postcards, and stickers.
Odnoklassniki is a technology-driven content and service platform: the social network offers 4K quality TV shows, music, products, and services, as well as money transfers to 18 countries. Today the platform is the market leader in online video and the first social network in Russia in terms of video content views: at its peak, videos on UC accumulate over 1 billion views per day.
What is Odnoklassniki?
Odnoklassniki is the name of the major Russian social media platform, which was established in 2006, and by today has grown into the number one platform in its country. Social media is considered one of the top50 most visited websites in the world, with around 50 million visits
Odnoklassniki was launched in March 2006 and for the first months it was not actually a commercial project – the Russian web developer Albert Popkov, who lived in London, worked on it just as a hobby.
Half a year after its launch, Odnoklassniki already had more than 1.5 million registered users. It was only then that Albert Popkov decided to register it officially as a company.
The original logo by Dmitryi Utkin depicted two abstract human figures of unidentifiable age and gender. One of them was orange, while the other was green. They were placed inside a stylized sun with orange and green rays. Below, there was the name of the project in Russian.
In 2011, the social network introduced a new logotype. While the original logo was created when Odnoklassniki did not even have any registered users, the 2011 version was developed when the scale of the project was already obvious. That’s why the logotype was much clearer, simpler, yet recognizable and meaningful – the qualities that typically require time and effort.
The visual center of the logo was a stylized human body with a big round head. If you rotated the logo to a right angle (counterclockwise), it could be read as “OK” – the head was the “O,” while the body was the “K.” The hidden “OK” has an additional meaning, apart from the regular one: it is the common abbreviation for “Odnoklassniki”.
The Odnoklassniki badge was refined and strengthened in 2016, with the concept and color palette fully repeating the previous version, but the contours of the lettering emboldened, characters made a bit shorter and wider. As for the graphical, orange, part, it remained without any changes, but due to the new typeface of the inscription, the stylized figure started looking more stable and balanced.
In 2021 the badge of the popular social media platform was redesigned again. First of all, the color palette of the logo is now composed of just one shade, orange, with gray completely removed. Secondly, the graphical icon above the lettering became smaller, giving the entire badge a more harmonized look. And, thirdly, the lettering is now set in a bolder and softer sans-serif font, with the contours of the characters extended and a bit flattened.
The latest logo modification was a minor one. There was a slight shift on the color palette and the typeface (within the same font family). While the previous image could be rotated to 45 degrees, the 2016 brand guidelines do not accept this.
The font family featured on the current Odnoklassniki logo is called Din Round Pro. It is the brand’s official typeface instead of Din Text Pro used on the previous logo. In case the Din Round Pro type family is unavailable, the Arial и Helvetica fonts are acceptable.
The shade of orange goes under the number 144 C in the Pantone Matching System and has the hex index: #ee8208. The list of main colors mentioned in the company’s official brand guidelines (2016) also includes three shades of grey: Pantone Cool Grey 9 (#75787b), Pantone Cool Grey 3 (#c7c9ca), and Pantone 432 C (#2d3237).