The ‘Sbubby’ subreddit was created all the way back in November 2016. However, the project has even deeper roots. Everything started in February of that year, on Tumblr.

According to ‘Know Your Meme,’ a few Tumblr users got the ball rolling by photoshopping well-known fast food chain logos to make them full of mistakes so that they’d sound hilarious when read.

One of the logos that were edited was that of ‘Subway,’ the sandwich place. It was spelled ‘Sbubby’ with the tag line ‘eef freef’ (aka ‘eat fresh’) underneath.

The trend soon spread to other corners of the internet, including to Imgur and, eventually, to Reddit. The sub was launched and took on the name ‘Sbubby.’ 

At the time of writing, the r/sbubby subreddit had over 660k members (or ‘Sbubbscribers’ if you will). According to the moderator team running the entire community, sbubbies are “logos whose text has been edited cleanly, such that it resembles the original logo but reads something else.”

The team has created a very detailed wiki and photo-editing guide that they recommend all of their members check out. They’re great reads, so be sure not to miss out on them.

All of the logos have to be as clean as possible so that, at a distance, the image would seem authentic. “The best part about sbubbies is that they look like the original logo, giving an absurd, abstract feel via edits. Unclean edits, inauthentic edits, and edits with the wrong font do not belong here,” the mods explain that they value high-quality work and effort.

On top of that, cropped logos or edits that only erase portions of the logo also shouldn’t be posted on r/sbubby. Meanwhile, you should also refrain from reposting your logos or those of others, unless the original posts have been deleted. The moderators also have a list of sbubbies and titles that they ask the community not to reference, including Hogwarts Legacy, Loss, REEEEEEE, Big Chungus, Hot Pockets, Bepis, and others. Otherwise, you’ll be banned for a week.

On the technical side of things, the images that you post have to be larger than 433x433 pixels. If they’re too small, they’ll be too blurry for anyone else to enjoy if they’re on their mobile phones. Any watermarks that you add to your creations have to be subtle so that they don’t draw attention away from the logo itself, defeating the point of the post in the first place.

What’s more, the moderators want their Sbubbscribers to put some effort into their titles, making them related to the images they post. And don’t forget to flair your posts correctly! The mods go into quite a lot of detail in their guide to explain what each category means, as some of them are quite vague.

Obviously, if you want to be a proper member of this and other online communities, you’ve got to respect your fellow redditors, too. There’s no tolerance for anyone being hateful toward others.

Naturally, no matter how good and creative your brand, product, or project logo looks, no matter how serious your company is, there’s nothing stopping someone from editing it and posting the funny version on the internet.

The best thing to do here, for businesses, would be to embrace what’s happening instead of getting all angry and bothered about it. You’d only damage your reputation if you started criticizing some random Reddit user for poking fun at your logo like they’ve done with dozens or even hundreds of other ones. Any publicity is good publicity, right? 

Regardless of what r/sbubby might do to your logo, it’s a good idea to put in the effort to truly make it shine. Ideally, your logo should be unique enough to stand out from your competitors’ brands, without being overly complex. In a sense, you want to find the right balance between simplicity and memorability.

Using lots of swirly, fancy fonts and a smörgåsbord might look great as a mural on your office wall, but it might not work well as a logo. You really want to choose the fonts and colors with care so that your target audience can immediately understand who you are and what your brand represents.