When Mark Zuckerberg announced last month that Facebook was changing its name, the company published a sleek animation online that showed logos of all its apps and products fusing together to form a shimmering vision of the future: a two-tone blue infinity symbol next to the word “Meta.”The new symbol and name change were nods to Mr. Zuckerberg’s plans to refocus the Silicon Valley giant toward what he sees as the unification of disparate digital worlds into the so-called metaverse, the immersive, interconnected online space largely enabled by augmented and virtual reality. “The metaverse is the next frontier in connecting people,” he said in an announcement.To design experts, the change by a scandal-plagued company was the latest example of efforts by corporate America to create brands that are less unique and ultimately less offensive. It was also a reflection of the growing challenge for corporate identities to exist in many different sizes and digital settings at once, from VR headsets to smartwatches — a challenge t …
