Rebranding Replit: Inspiration to Action

At Replit, AI is not just a footnote, but a step change in democratizing software development, and their mission is to explore and refine their brand to capture the history of software development and computer science, which they believe is essential to communicate their perspective. They drew inspiration from two parallel histories: the progress made by Replit and its users, and the broader history of computer science and the industry's growth. The breadth of this idea led them to broaden their inputs and discuss with developers, software creators, and designers. They mapped out three core ideas that guided their design work: the sacred history of software development, code as language, and pixels, characters, and atomic units of code. Their visual identity embodies the history of software in its conceptual level, focusing on the people behind the revolutions and the democratization of access to software and building software. The Replit brand is built on the idea that AI is a development of this history, not a break from it, and that it's late enough for users to start building with AI but early enough that nobody has figured out what will be built.