For the first time in nine years, Fuji X Weekly has a new logo! The old one served me well, but it was time for a refresh. Typically logos last for seven to 10 years, with a mild refresh somewhere in the middle, so nine years is a good run.

The original Fuji X Weekly logo was nicknamed The Teton X. I made it using PowerPoint (yes, PowerPoint!). I’m not a graphic designer and don’t know much about creating logos, but I knew that I wanted it to be an X, because—well, you know—Fujifilm X-series cameras and all, plus ‘X’ is this website’s middle name. The logo as a letter, and specifically X, made a lot of sense to me. I found a font that I liked, put a photo into it, and called it good.

There’s a lot more meaning to it than that. First, the picture is of the Grand Tetons, photographed at the iconic Snake River Overlook where Ansel Adams captured one of his famous photographs. I wouldn’t have said this back then, but I’m pretty convinced now that Ansel Adams would have appreciated Fujifilm Recipes (at least in concept), as he loved—and wrote a whole book about—Polaroids, especially the one-step process that he called revolutionary. In a way, Film Simulation Recipes are a modern equivalence of that. The mountains have come to resemble the rise in popularity of Fuji X Weekly Recipes, while the river is metaphorical for how Recipes are tied closely to photography’s past while leading us toward the future. The up-and-down arrows are reminiscent of the adjustments one makes when entering Recipe parameters into their camera. Of course, I didn’t think about any of that when I made it, those ideas all came to me later.

The photo itself was captured with a Fujifilm X-E1. When I started this website, Film Simulation Recipes were a fairly novel concept, and I had no idea how big they would become. In retrospect, had I known, I would have made a better effort for the picture in the icon to be a straight-out-of-camera JPEG made using a Recipe; instead (and rather ironically), it is a RAW edit, as I wasn’t shooting straight-out-of-camera JPEGs at the time I made that image. I’ve had mixed feelings about it for years. I chose this particular photo simply because it fit well inside the X. Here’s the full picture:

My daughter, Joy Roesch, is a Graphic Design student in college. She offered to revise my logo as a project, which I thought was a great idea. It was overdue for a refresh, so I was pretty excited to see what she would come up with. And it exceeded my expectations! She knocked it out of the park. I don’t think it could have turned out any better than it did.

I included both the new and old logos already above, but I thought it would be worthwhile to see them side-by-side before discussing the new logo in-depth. Let’s take a look:

The new logo remains an X in a similar—yet more sleek and modern—font. There’s no photo inside; instead, the logo is inspired by classic rangefinder cameras and modern Fujifilm models like the X100VI, but in a generic way that doesn’t bring to mind any specific camera. In the middle is a circle representing a lens, and inside the lens is Mount Fuji with the sun rising behind it. The teal colors come from this website. The new logo still goes from light-at-the-top to dark-on-the-bottom, and when viewed small (like the Fuji X Weekly App icon, or on browser tabs), it looks familiar, not too divergent from the old logo.

The significance of Mount Fuji is three-fold. First, it points back to the old Fuji X Weekly logo, which featured an iconic mountain. Second, it pays homage to Fujifilm. Not only did the “Fuji” in Fujifilm come from Mount Fuji, but the peak was included in their original logo; additionally, for their first 35 years, Fujifilm’s headquarters was located near Mount Fuji. Also, of course, there is “Fuji” in Fuji X Weekly. Third, in Japan, Mount Fuji is viewed as a source of artistic inspiration, which makes it especially appropriate for the new logo. The rising sun is often pictured with Mount Fuji, and Japan is also known as Land of the rising sun. Metaphorically, it symbolizes the rising popularity of Fuji X Weekly Recipes, and also more generally it conveys optimism, possibility, and fresh starts, which is how a lot of people feel when they begin using Fujifilm Recipes. The cool tone of the teal-green color represents balance, clarity, and peace, which connects each element of the logo completely. Yes, a lot of thought went into this redesign!

There are actually a whole bunch of alternative versions of the new logo, including (but not limited to) the ones above. I’ll be rolling it out over the next few days, so don’t be surprised when you find it here and there. I’m really excited to see it across my various platforms. I want to give a special shout-out to Joy for designing it—thank you, you really did fantastic!