YouTube Shorts Logo

YouTube Shorts Logo transparent, icon, symbol in SVG, PNG, AI formats.

YouTube Shorts Logo
Author: The specific designer or team behind the YouTube Shorts logo is not publicly credited, which is common for design work done within large corporations. The logo was developed internally by Google's and YouTube's branding and design teams. These teams are responsible for maintaining and evolving the visual identity of one of the world's most recognized brands.
Format: SVG, PNG, AI
Size: 63KB
Update: Nov 21, 2024
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The YouTube Shorts logo is a modern and recognizable symbol representing the platform’s short-form video feature. It is designed to be easily identifiable, aligning with the main YouTube brand while also carving out its own identity in the competitive social media landscape. The logo consists of a distinctive red icon next to the word “Shorts” in a clean, black font.

YouTube Shorts Logo

The emblem is a stylized, multilayered play button. Unlike the traditional YouTube play icon, which is a simple triangle inside a rectangle, the Shorts icon appears more dynamic and fluid, resembling a looping or layered shape. This design choice cleverly hints at the quick, looping, and multi-faceted nature of the short videos it represents. The use of YouTube’s signature red color immediately connects it to the parent brand, ensuring brand consistency and leveraging YouTube’s established recognition.

About YouTube Shorts Logo

YouTube is an American online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005,1 by three former PayPal employees: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. Their goal was to create a simple way for people to upload and share video clips online. The concept quickly proved to be immensely popular, revolutionizing how people consume media and express their creativity.

In November 2006, just over a year and a half after its launch, YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion. Under Google’s ownership, YouTube has grown exponentially, expanding from a single website for user-generated content into a global media powerhouse that includes original programming, live streaming, music, and services like YouTube Premium and YouTube TV. It is the second most visited website in the world, after Google itself.

What This YouTube Shorts

YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch, and share originally-created videos. The platform provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe2 and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small. It offers a vast range of content, including music videos, video clips, short films, feature films, documentaries, audio recordings, movie trailers, live streams, vlogs, and educational videos.

With the launch of YouTube Shorts, the company directly entered the market for short-form vertical video content, a space popularized by platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. This feature allows users to create and watch videos up to 60 seconds in length, shot on their mobile devices. The strategic goal of Shorts is to capture the growing audience for quick, engaging, and mobile-first content, fostering a new generation of creators and keeping users engaged within the YouTube ecosystem.

History of Logo Creation

The YouTube Shorts logo was introduced following the feature’s announcement and rollout. The service was first tested in India in September 2020 as a direct response to the massive popularity of TikTok. It was officially launched to the public in the United States in March 2021 and globally by July 2021. The logo was created and unveiled during this period to give the new feature a distinct visual identity.

The creation of the logo was driven by the need to differentiate Shorts from traditional, long-form YouTube videos while keeping it firmly within the YouTube family. The design process involved adapting the core elements of the main YouTube brand—specifically the play button icon and the signature red color—into a new, dynamic mark. The result is a logo that feels both familiar to existing YouTube users and fresh enough to signify a new and different viewing experience.

Design and Logo Elements

The design of the YouTube Shorts logo is a deliberate blend of simplicity and meaning, reflecting its function as a quick-content platform. It is composed of two primary elements: the symbol and the wordmark.

  • The Symbol: This is the most distinctive part of the logo. It is a modified version of the YouTube play icon. Instead of a single, flat shape, it appears as two overlapping, rounded red shapes that form a play button. This layering creates a sense of depth and motion, evoking concepts like “rewind,” “repeat,” or a “stack” of content, all of which are relevant to the Shorts feed experience.
  • The Wordmark: The text “Shorts” is rendered in a clean, modern, and highly legible sans-serif font. Its black color provides a strong contrast against the vibrant red of the symbol and any background it is placed upon. The capitalization—a capital “S” followed by lowercase letters—makes it friendly and approachable. The placement to the right of the symbol creates a balanced and stable composition.

Logo Evolution

As a relatively new feature, the YouTube Shorts logo itself has not undergone any significant evolution since its introduction around 2021. Its design was born out of the modern YouTube branding that was established in 2017.

To understand its design roots, it’s helpful to look at the evolution of the main YouTube logo:

  • 2005-2011: The original logo featured the word “You” in black, followed by “Tube” encased in a red, rounded rectangle designed to look like a television screen. It used the Alternate Gothic font.
  • 2011-2017: The logo was refined with a brighter shade of red and subtle changes to the gradient and shadows, giving it a more modern look, though the core concept remained the same.
  • 2017-Present: This marked the most significant redesign. The red “tube” was removed from the text and transformed into a standalone play button icon placed to the left of the wordmark. The company also introduced a new custom font, YouTube Sans. It is this modern, icon-focused branding that directly influenced the creation of the YouTube Shorts logo.

Color

The color palette of the YouTube Shorts logo is simple, bold, and consistent with YouTube’s overall brand identity.

  • Red (#FF0000): This is the iconic “YouTube Red.” It is a vibrant, pure red that signifies action, passion, energy, and attention. In the context of the logo, it is used for the play symbol, making it the focal point and a clear call-to-action.
  • Black (#030303 or similar): The wordmark “Shorts” uses a solid, almost-pure black. This color choice ensures maximum legibility and provides a strong, stable contrast to the dynamic red icon. Black is associated with sophistication, power, and simplicity.
  • White: While not always visible in the logo itself, white is a crucial part of the brand’s color scheme, often used for the play triangle within the red symbol or as a background color. It provides a clean, neutral space for the other colors to stand out.

Font

The font used for the “Shorts” wordmark is a custom sans-serif typeface called YouTube Sans. This font was developed by Saffron during the 2017 rebranding. It is based on the classic Grotesque and geometric typeface styles and is designed for optimal legibility across a wide range of sizes and digital screens, from a large TV to a small smartphone.

YouTube Sans is characterized by its clean lines, open letterforms, and a subtle curvature on the tips of some letters, which gives it a friendly and approachable feel. Its design was inspired by the shape of the YouTube play button icon itself. Using this proprietary font ensures brand consistency and reinforces the connection between the Shorts feature and the main YouTube platform.

Symbol

The symbol of the YouTube Shorts logo is a modern interpretation of the universal icon for “play.” It is a red, abstract shape that contains a white triangle pointing to the right. Unlike the main YouTube logo’s flat, rectangular “play head,” the Shorts symbol has a more fluid, layered appearance. It can be interpreted as two overlapping video screens or a looping arrow, alluding to the short, endlessly scrollable, and repeatable nature of the content.

This clever design makes the symbol more dynamic than its predecessor. It captures the fast-paced energy of the Shorts experience. The core element—the white play triangle—is preserved, ensuring that its function is immediately understood by users worldwide. It successfully balances the heritage of the YouTube brand with the fresh, energetic identity of its new short-form content feature.

Stories

The launch and growth of YouTube Shorts have been accompanied by several interesting strategies and milestones. The platform’s entry into the short-form video market was a calculated and aggressive move to compete directly with TikTok, and its branding reflects this ambition.

One of the most significant stories is the establishment of the $100 million YouTube Shorts Fund. Announced in 2021, this fund was created to reward and incentivize creators for making popular and engaging Shorts. This was a direct strategy to bootstrap the ecosystem, attracting top talent from other platforms by offering direct monetization before a traditional ad-revenue sharing model was in place. It signaled YouTube’s serious commitment to making Shorts a success and helped fuel an explosion of content on the platform.

The growth statistics for Shorts have been staggering. Within two years of its launch, YouTube announced that Shorts was generating over 50 billion daily views. This rapid user adoption was fueled by its prominent placement within the main YouTube app, leveraging the platform’s massive existing user base of over two billion monthly logged-in users. The logo, constantly visible on the bottom navigation bar of the app, became a familiar sight for billions of users almost overnight, demonstrating the power of integrating a new brand into an established and widely used interface.

 

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