Facebook asked Eric Olson, the designer of Klavika, the font used for the original wordmark, to design a new typeface.
Ben Barry, a former designer at Facebook, had also proposed tweaks to the Facebook wordmark in 2012 which were approved by the company but never implemented.
The actual Facebook ‘F’ logo isn’t being changed. You’ll only notice the difference where the full name is used.
When Facebook’s logo was first created in 2005, the company was just getting started and we wanted the logo to feel grown up and to be taken seriously. Now that we are established, we set out to modernize the logo to make it feel more friendly and approachable. While we explored many directions, ultimately we decided that we only needed an update, and not a full redesign. We worked with Eric Olson — whose typeface Klavika was used in the original logo — and developed a custom typeface to reflect where we are now and where we are headed.