TikTok
Source: developers.tiktok.com TikTok. License: All Rights Reserved.
The TikTok wordmark was introduced in 2018 when Chinese internet company ByteDance expanded overseas and acquired musical.ly to make the short-form video platform available globally. According to an article by Chloe West, the musical note symbol in its current form debuted already in 2017.
The logo was – and sometimes still is – used alongside Sofia, especially for all external marketing communications. Some sources claim that the wordmark was made by modifying Olivier Gourvat’s typeface. That is unlikely, though: none of the glyphs match Sofia.
At some point, Wolff Olins worked on TikTok’s brand strategy and visual identity, using Sofia.
In 2022–2024, TikTok Design Director Alex Polozun worked with Grilli Type on a custom type system. TikTok Sans builds upon the wordmark and comes in Text and Display sizes. These new fonts are not featured in this post.
Source: web.archive.org TikTok. License: All Rights Reserved.
Homepage with logo in 2018. The text typeface is Sofia.
Source: developers.tiktok.com License: All Rights Reserved.
Logo plus Sofia for a graphic from the developers page
Source: wolffolins.com Wolff Olins. License: All Rights Reserved.
Hashtags in Sofia
Source: wolffolins.com Wolff Olins. License: All Rights Reserved.
XXL ad at BFI IMAX, London
This post was originally published at Fonts In Use