INSTA GOES POP
SACRILEGE! IN THE SPRING OF 2015, INSTAGRAM’S LEADERSHIP WAS CAUTIOUSLY EXPLORING WHETHER TO MAKE A MAJOR CHANGE TO ITS WILDLY POPULAR IMAGE-SHARING SERVICE—ONE THAT WOULD ALTER HOW THE COMPANY DEFINED ITSELF. AT ISSUE: SHOULD INSTAGRAM REMOVE THE RESTRICTION THAT ALL POSTED PHOTOS AND VIDEOS BE SQUARE?
A debate about squares versus rectangles might seem pedantic, even silly. But along with the app’s hipster filter effects and its Polaroid-esque icon, that square border had been an Instagram signature, akin to Twitter’s 140-character count. The shape so typified Instagram’s elegantly minimalist sensibility that Ian Spalter, newly arrived at the time from YouTube as head of design, was aghast at the idea of abandoning it. “I just started here,” he remembers thinking, “and now you’re breaking everything?”
That August, Instagram steeled itself and began allowing users to post photos and videos at any aspect ratio. But rather than being freaked out by the change, Instagram’s shutterbugs immediately began producing a greater variety of imagery, in higher quantities than ever. “We might have been too precious,” admits Instagram cofounder and CEO Kevin Systrom this January at the company’s shiny new three-story headquarters in Menlo Park, California, which are decorated with jumbo-size Instagram photos and located a mile and a half from its former office on Facebook’s main campus. His team’s stubborn allegiance to its original design, he concluded, had been holding it back.
