While the change in Instagram's logo is far from revolutionary, by doing away with the stock "Billabong" typeface, the company has shown that careful, unique changes and a little ligature can have a huge effect.
The Facebook logo got a trim -- the blue bar has disappeared and the "F" now bleeds to the bottom. The logo has been flattened, in line with this year's biggest trend. The "Like" button received a similar touch-up, now feeling more like a button and less like an icon.
Yahoo redesigned many of their brands this year, including parts of Tumblr and its own mail service. Flickr, however, takes our top social media spot. With a visual layout, reduced load-times, and a free terabyte for every user, the photo service finally makes sense.
The Harper's Bazaar redesign shows that Hearst is willing to make some necessary changes in an evolving industry. Even keeping up with trends, rather than setting them, can be an improvement, especially when the magazine has been slow to adapt.
Taking cues from USA Today's 2012 redesign, MSNBC has built a news site that looks very different from the majority of the competition. Clean, colorful and sporting intuitive user experience, the website just might take some weight off the hurting TV channel.
As desktop browsing goes the way of radio, NPR has built a clean site that is most effective when viewed on mobile.
The company whose "Snowfall" piece started it all is making steps to catch up the rest of its site. The prototype redesign is more effective on mobile than traditional desktop, but considering the 162 year-old company's recent partnerships with new media companies, we can be assured that's the direction it's heading.
With all this innovation, some companies might lose sight of their foundation. The Daily Beast's in-house redesign takes inspiration from old-time print newspapers, but implements the idea nicely enough that you might not notice. Also, the most innovative article pages of 2013 could do wonders for its bounce rate.
Only in its second year, Medium finished up 2013 with a beautiful in-house redesign. Medium was founded by the same two men who brought us Twitter in 2006, but there's nothing micro about this blogging platform. A bold and vibrant layout ensures that any well-written article will be enjoyed to the end, it thankfully avoids the dizzying special effects common to the redesigns of this year.
When it comes to cars, specs are important. Knowing this, most manufacturers cram all the data they can into messy little grids. Not Audi. Its redesigned website matches the aesthetic of the cars themselves, where fine engineering is clothed in graceful lines.
As Refinery29's site grew into more than just a fashion blog, content organization suffered. But, as the lifestyle brand understands well, a little bit goes a long way. There's nothing about the new site that feels overdone, and touches of jQuery and parallax fit like the perfect accessory.
One of the first clothing brands to build a website in the '90s, Diesel's redesign sets a new standard for online retail. The clean, grid-based layout manages to be – like the company's clothing – off-the-rack and luxurious at once.
As Google's design language has evolved through Android and iOS over the past few years, the branding fell behind. The cleaner homepage and logo, which put to use established assets, are reminders of the company's evolution.
With the redesign of the Find My Friends app in November, we can finally say "so long" to skeuomorphic design on the world's most popular phone. While Apple's latest iteration somewhat abandons the famed attention to detail, it's welcome because it shows that even without Steve Jobs, the company is committed to innovation.
Many of Google's apps have been getting facelifts recently, but Google Play Music shows the most improvement. Now Apple users can no longer brag that their user experience is the more intuitive one.
While "flat" was certainly the biggest design buzzword of 2013, perhaps the most important trends of the year came from the mainstreaming of responsive and adaptive design, increasing collaboration between designers and developers.
Even average web users began to think about their consumption habits, with Harvard Business Review calling user experience "the new black in business." With that in mind, and as innovation in the space continues to expand, we've compiled a list of the best redesigns to come from 2013 in social media, media, retail and tech.
See also: 15 Pinterest Users Every Designer Should Follow
Big design changes have popped up across various industries within the past year — just think of parallax scrolling, popularized by The New York Times' "Snowfall" piece published in December 2012. JavaScript innovations have the potential to revitalize longform journalism and other static content with high bounce rates. However, parallax and those loud jQuery tricks can be dizzying, and even flattening carries its own risks: loss of hierarchy, low contrast and oversimplified work that appears unfinished.
As companies like The New York Times and Vox Media have served as an effective avant-garde in previous years, others have struggled to work the tools well. Yahoo, in an apparent attempt to streamline their user experience, over-rectified by removing well-liked features. Slate is cluttered to accommodate every imaginable type of user. Target, as AdWeek pointed out, is just plain ugly.
With all this change, what dictates success, as always, are the foundations. While Apple's iOS 7 has been criticized for its disorienting animations, its beauty lies in its flow and living, breathing hierarchy. Refinery29, another redesign on our list, balances JavaScript usage with dynamic typography.
Our selections for the best redesigns of 2013 practice restraint, avoiding trends-for-trending-sake, but have successfully evolved to satisfy the 2014 web-user.
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Image: Mashable, Nina Frazier