When a company so prevalent that it has become a verb in our common vocabulary changes its primary mark, eventually every computer, smart phone, tablet, watch, car console, whatever-user is going to see it, and probably have an opinion about it.
Recently, Google introduced a new logo, owning that, “This isn’t the first time we’ve changed our look and it probably won’t be the last,” and with the accessibility of social media, anyone and everyone can make their thoughts on the matter known. When I submitted my vote to an AdAge poll, I saw that 28% voted, “I love it—so uncluttered!,” leaving the majority at 71% saying, “I hate it—Fisher Price wants its look back.”
I am definitely a Google-loyalist and latched on to it in the early days as my browser-of-choice thanks to all the white space on the homepage. In a world with cluttered options like Netscape, Yahoo, and AOL, Google was so refreshing to these designer eyes. These days, I most often see the logo in the corner of my gmail inbox, and it seems like most often that space has a Google Doodle instead, and it’s rare to see the actual logo. I always enjoy the constantly innovative ways the logo can be reconfigured to fit holidays and important events while still reading as “Google.” The doodlers take a lot of liberties with the typeface used to spell out Google and often use totally different characters than in the main logo, but sometimes the true mark is present in the illustration. It will be interesting to see if some of the personality of the old logo, with its quirky lowercase “g,” will be lost in doodles going forward since the new typeface is more streamlined.
Just like many of the doodles that hint at the brand, the four simple dots that are a part of the new identity system still come across as “Google” without any characters at all since they’re just the right brand colors. To me, that sums up the power of a brand. Unassuming shapes as basic as circles can still communicate quite a bit with the right branding behind them. It’s a concept even my two year old knows since she yells, “TARGET!” every time she sees their two red circles, even if we’re not making one of our many Target runs and just diving by the store.
My favorite site for new identity reviews is Under Consideration, and I think they sum up the change well by saying of the old logo, “We currently think it’s good and many are mourning its demise not because it was a great piece of design like the IBM logo but because we’ve grown so accustomed to it that anything different is an assault on what we know to be dear and true on the internet. To me, it was about time for that logo to go away.” The post goes on to say, “This ‘boring’ solution is safe and almost expected but it’s extremely appropriate… The official, short verdict from me is that this is great. Really great. It’s not a groundbreaking logo but it doesn’t need to be.”
What do you think of Google’s new sans serif and still primary-colored mark? Love it? Hate it? Find it meh? Since the internet is full of opinions on the change, I’ll save you some Googling, and here are a variety of perspectives:
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