I love it. Quite often logo redesign processes gets completely out of hand, but this was a significant improvement over the older version: Cleaner, more modern and beautiful in all its simplicity. Bravo!
I don't like it. It seems more juvenile in the same way comic sans gets criticized for. The loss of character on the lower case g is especially unfortunate.
I really like this new look, but really hated Facebook's move away from Klavika earlier this year. This to me feels more friendly, fun, and still has personality whereas I feel Facebook's new logo is dull and lifeless.
It is because the terminal cut of the g attempts to geometrically bisect the bar of the e, whilst simultaneously trying to resemble a smile. Those are irreconcilable design objectives. The capital G is still wasting vast quantities of space. I agree, overall, this new typography has a kindergarten aesthetic. It's not for me, certainly.
However I think the colour blocking and letter shaping on the new favicon is superb.
It seems off-putting right now, but even the Airbnb logo redesign has become less offensive looking over time looking so I think people will adjust to Google's new logo and look back and see the old version as outdated.
The smaller version of the logo looks just like comic sans to me and if I'm not directly looking at the bigger version I also see comic sans. I am really not liking it.
I agree. Material design to me seemed like a great step as well. The different looks between Google products didn't seem so bad till they started to move everything over to material design and I realized how fragmented the previous designs were. Didn't even see the problem till it was fixed. slow clap
That seems like what they're aiming for? Seems to go against the seriousness that they seem to be pulling into android's mechanisms, but it's in line with historic google as a "fun place".
The sloped crossbar on ‘e’ is characteristic of early Roman typefaces of the so-called Venetian or Humanist class¹, which were inspired by Carolingian script².
Catull³, the font on which the former Google wordmark was based (it's not exactly Catull — some details are simplified, like the serif edges being snapped to 45°), is actually closer to the script than to typical Venetian typefaces — which, once you've seen the whole thing, blows the idea of the old logo looking ‘more professional’ out of the water, unless your profession is ‘medieval scribe’.
I think these things might make a small difference but overall it's not important.
I view Heineken as a boring lager which has little character, probably due to being produced in industrial quantities. A jaunty 'e' isn't going to fix that.
Same for google. So long as they continue to bang out appropriate search results I'm with them. Right until they don't.
Logo design and typography are intended to affect you subconsciously, not consciously.
That tilted 'e' is meant to advertise the brand in the middle of dozens of other logos in the store, and draw consumers in from that myriad of choices based on psychological cues and associations they may not even be aware of. The effect is important in aggregate - some large number of potential customers conditioned over a lifetime of advertising to associate different typographic styles with emotional states and narratives being slightly more conducive to pick your beer over others than they otherwise might have been, because now it's 'nicer.'
Objective support for this hypothesis is thin on the ground.
In reality logos are nowhere near the top of the list of factors that drive a buying decision. Whatever bounce effect businesses get from a new logo can usually be explained just as much by novelty as by implied psychological voodoo.
Generally, I'm suspicious of management-by-logo. When I see logos being updated at vast expense for no good reason, I worry about the direction a company is heading in.
> In reality logos are nowhere near the top of the list of factors that drive a buying decision.
Great. Then replace the Chanel or Louis Vuitton logos with a bright primary colored Google logo, and see what their purse sales are like a year from now. I'm sure millionaire socialite women would love to have their bright red-blue-green-yellow logos on their Saint Laurent jacket (although it would be perfect for Moschino...)
Sorry dude, but you're over thinking this. Logos are part and parcel to brand identity, and everything about branding determines sales.
If you don't have a good logo, you don't have a good business.
> This is a false comparison. Logos for clothes sit on the clothes which are themselves judged entirely on their appearance.
Some do. The vast majority of designer clothes don't.
People buy the brand, not the product.
> Google's search engine has a separate function that stands on it's own two feet irrespective of a change to an 'e'.
People bought into the Google brand identity. They were the first to eliminate all the crap around their web search engine, so it would just be a single text box. This made sure people know what Google was - the simple search interface. All of this is part of the brand's visual identity.
Do you think they do an empirical study on this when they first made it?
It is your brand that sells your product.
The shape of the letter 'e' is part of that marketing that sells your product.
In fact, EVERYTHING you do is fundamentally related to sales. You are always closing.
This is backwards - the product sells the brand. Brands do not just come out of nowhere; people have to like the product first before they can establish loyalty.
Their brand is having a very good search engine. Ever think that the marketing guy is good at persuading you that the marketing guy is the most important thing?
I agree. In fact, I half expected them to write alphabet (name of the company). I wasn't aware of the new logo and had browsed to Google.com to search for something.
I agree ... but this is just the price for showing up at this level of the game. It is of course a major effort for those professionals who executed on it, and is beyond my capabilities - but it's not strategic level stuff - just like stealth fighters are not strategic level stuff anymore.
(My previous and clearly downvote-magnet post that is a little more detailed):
An updated, simple look and feel is not a matter for congratulations. Look at stealth airplanes. If you don't have a stealth warplane, the modern SAMs can take you out no problem, with stealth the odds are much more in your favour. Stealth tech is the table stakes, the price any superpower or superpower-to-be must pay just to show up.
If Google had not done this, or had done it badly, then we would worry. Behind the scenes many many professionals worked hard to make sure it went well - as expected.
This is something I personally would never achieve - I could not steer a multi-national rebranding. But Google has to - it's the price just for staying in the game.
So kudos to those involved, it took years of your experience and effort. But for Google, it's just what needed to be done to keep up. And if we should not be distracted, internally they really must not be distracted.
Virii were mostly spread over floppy (boot block or trojan) back then. While I agree that it's very unlikely that this system will get infected, don't think that times were better back then :)
Richard Karsmakers used "virii" to describe a plural of computer virus in the 16-bit era, largely on the basis that it was shorter. It isn't correct Latin, but it is a VX scene thing, so is absolutely correct in this context.
Backend in node.js. We leverage the fact that we get huge amounts of bot traffic, by saving all entries they fetch from Instagram to build our database of popular tags and users.
Thank you. After reading your comment - and many others - we'll look into narrowing down our niché. We're thinking about video games, movies and TV. That's a pretty defined target audience with a clear need for lists (separating good games from bad, movies, shows, etc.)
That's exactly what we're trying to make; a kind of Buzzfeed 2.0, where the "2.0" stands for improved functionality and quality of lists. That's our vision anyway.
I saw your site, looks very cool. Perhaps I could mail you our story?
