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Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Flickr, Intel, Citibank, Macy's, BP, Vitamin Water to name a few, have their logotypes entirely in lowercase. I assume the reason is to make it more casual and friendly.

Is there an explanation from the UX perspective for this trend, and are there any studies to prove that such a trend is found to be psychologically more approachable to the users?

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    No. It's just "cool" at the moment. Sep 8, 2017 at 17:47
  • It’s more than cool, people « read » or « recognize » words that are capitalized properly faster, which is why the UK road signs are like that, using a clear font : there was a lot of research done...
    – Solar Mike
    Jan 13, 2019 at 20:02

2 Answers 2

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While it's basically a trend, there are psychological reasons that support this trend: in consumer's minds, all lowercase logos are friendlier, while proper case logos have more authority.

Across two studies, the authors find that psychologically, consumers feel closer to lowercase wordmarks, which increase perceptions of brand friendliness compared with the uppercase wordmarks.

Extract taken from The effects of uppercase and lowercase wordmarks on brand perceptions (PDF Download Available).

Additionally, there's evidence that lowercase text is easier to read, see article by NCBI Letter case and text legibility in normal and low vision from where I took the following image:

enter image description here

and this paragraph:

Miles Tinker, an authority on legibility and typography said “Lower-case letters have more ‘character’ in terms of variation in shape and the contrasting of ascenders and descenders with short letters. This leads to characteristic word forms that are much easier to read than words in all capitals” (M. Tinker, 1963 p. 34) Tinker found that while upper-case text was perceived at a greater distance, it had a ‘retarding effect’ on reading speed, especially for long intervals of reading, and was preferred by only 10% of readers, compared with 90% for lower-case text. (M. A. Tinker, 1932; M. A. Tinker & Patterson, 1929)

Conclusion

While there's a lot of trend and imitation, there seems to be some solid arguments that support this trend from a psychological point of view

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    "all lowercase logos are friendlier" yep! The perception is to make the name feel less like a noun and more like a verb. Sep 9, 2017 at 2:40
  • Didn't think about that, good catch
    – Devin
    Sep 9, 2017 at 14:57
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    Its interesting to see UX related research which goes back to 1929 !
    – PhillipW
    Sep 10, 2017 at 20:03
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    @PhillipW, as a matter of fact there's a lot of UX research going back to early years of XX century, they just didn't call it UX. My wife was the curator for the Experimental Psychology Research museum at Univ. of Buenos Aires and it basically included devices used by one scientist who researched worker's conditions on their labor environments and how to improve those conditions. And this is just an example, I was looking a site from Max Planck institute with incredible research dating back to 1890
    – Devin
    Sep 11, 2017 at 15:01
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The typography has more balance in lowercase logos which gives the impression that the business itself has balance and balance is widely associated with truth. Balancing statements are used by all types of spokespeople to influence their audience. This truth is also expressed in symmetry, the balance of proportion is inherently appealing in all types of things perceived by human beings.

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