Google Changes Logo 132
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday, Google announced a logo change that many on Slashdot have probably already encountered. The logo, according to the technology supergiant, was updated to reflect the fact that people "interact with Google products across many different platforms, apps and devices—sometimes all in a single day." This differentiates from the past when people only used a desktop PC to access Google's services.
And...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I sometimes see just gibberish, dark marketing gibberish.
"I see marketers talking gibberish. They walk around like regular people. They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're talking gibberish. They're everywhere".
Here's new logo (Score:1)
in case you were looking for the logo here it is.
https://m.imgur.com/XaIWseY [imgur.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I really want to do a fake "WARNING: Goatse link!" but I couldn't be arsed.
Re: (Score:3)
I guess we should be happy that they didn't use Comic Sans.....
Phew! (Score:5, Funny)
I looked at Google last night and fell off my chair when I saw a differnet, yet oddly familiar, logo. Many dozens of other news outfits were reporting on it, but I waited until I saw the story on Slashdot to confirm it.
Slashdot is to logo confirmation as Netcraft is to BSD's death confirmation.
Google, an Alphabet company (Score:2)
Was it familiar because Google is bringing its branding more in line with that of the Alphabet holding company [abc.xyz] that owns it?
I don't see anything different. (Score:1)
So they changed the font? Is it going to make any difference at all? Convince one more person to use a google service? This is not newsworthy, or even marketing worthy.
Re: (Score:3)
The old one wasn't Comic-Sans-y enough.
They still need to add bad kerning, however.
Re: (Score:2)
The old one wasn't Comic-Sans-y enough.
They still need to add bad kerning, however.
Yes, and Facebook did the same two months ago.
In related news, Donald Knuth has been heard saying that he was starting to work on a new social website and a new web search engine.
Re:I don't see anything different. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, a major branding change of the internet's arguably most powerful or important company is news.
WHY did they change it? That is news for nerds.
They changed it because serif fonts are hard to read at different resolutions and don't scale well on small devices...like phones and watches.
Non-serif fonts do scale well.
Thus, news for nerds.
Re:I don't see anything different. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's actually not true. Companies often rebrand themselves, not to further get more traction and get more users, but to retain the ones they have. If a company is perceived as being old or stodgy, then people are more likely to gravitate to companies that don't appear that way. This is doubly true in the tech sector.
But more to your point, as the article states, Google is by no means done trying to get more users; it's now all about getting users in developing countries. And making sure their logo looks peachy on a tiny African or Asian cell phone is in fact actually important for branding.
Re: (Score:2)
Believe it or not, important decisions even in a corporate environment are often based on emotion or "gut instinct" and not on hard-data.
We're not talking about some silly upper-management parody, but highly intelligent people who know better.
People are people, after all, not perfectly rational beings.
Re: (Score:2)
At 60pt, they could write it in frickin' Viner Hand for all it matters and people would still have no trouble recognizing it even on the tiniest of screens.
On an iPhone 5, for example, it literally spans a good inch and a half, and roughly a third that height. "Hard to read" just doesn't apply.
Re: (Score:2)
Google has already changed its logo at least a half dozen times in its short history, including changing the color of the G outright from green to blue. This is the third tweak to their logo in the last five years alone (though it is, admittedly, the biggest one). Hardly newsworthy.
Moreover, your suggested "why" makes no sense at all. You're quite correct that serif fonts don't do so well at "different resolutions" (more specifically, at lower resolutions), but we're at the point where an HD resolution is c
Re: (Score:2)
Google changed their logo because they wanted the attention that has been given to them because of the change. That attention will eventually wane, and after doing a few other things to get attention they'll eventually change it again. That's what companies do, by and large.
Re: (Score:2)
I used serifed fonts with antialiasing in Windows 95 on an 800x600 display. There were no problems with them.
Yes, there were. That's why new fonts were created specifically to deal with the screens of that day and why techniques like pixel hinting and sub-pixel rendering were created and used: many fonts looked like crap on those screens. I'm not saying they were unreadable, by any means, nor am I suggesting that all of the issues from back then have been solved, but serif fonts are, generally speaking, significantly more readable (and significantly better looking) on a modern, high-res display than they are on a
Re: (Score:2)
Serif fonts work fine on small devices, they don't work well at low DPI. Which, in an age of 200+DPI on cheap devices, means that this move makes little sense. The only reason that the scaling is a problem would be if they're doing something stupid, like using a bitmap image rather than a vector. And, of course, a quick trip to google.com confirms that they are, indeed, using a png rather than an svg (with png fallback if they care that much) for their logo.
So, the real story here is that, in 2015, we
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Its still way too Romper Room-ey
Re: (Score:2)
Romper bomper stomper boo
(And yes the new logo is like Romper Room and Comic Sans had an illicit affair, giving birth to this childish monstrosity of a logo.)
Re: (Score:2)
Why? I don't use google, so I would have had to wait twelve or more hours to see it, instead of reading it here right now, opening a new tab, and navigating to google. I've used duckduckgo for many years, but I do think I see a difference in the logo, now that you draw my attention to it. (yawn.)
I don't mind it. (Score:2)
I don't mind it.
All changes look bad initially.
Prediction: After a week non-one will notice. We will have always been at war with EastAsia.
Re:Slashdot - only halfway there (Score:5, Funny)
This raises the important question of whether the comma in that slogan means "and" or "or". Discuss.
Re: (Score:2)
This raises the important question of whether the comma in that slogan means "and" or "or". Discuss.
Actually, all it really demonstrates, is that the person who came up with that catchphrase was too ignorant to know when to use a semicolon properly.
Re: (Score:2)
This raises the important question of whether the comma in that slogan means "and" or "or". Discuss.
Actually, all it really demonstrates, is that the person who came up with that catchphrase was too ignorant to know when to use a semicolon properly.
I think semicolons were deprecated in the Web 2.0 standard.
Agreed (Score:5, Insightful)
Opinions:
Aesthetically the new logo looks okay. Of course the old logo looked okay too, and as someone who's usually not enthusiastic about change for change's sake i really don't see the point.
However, it is also clearly meant to reference the new "flat" "Material Design" that Google has been pushing in their apps and OS. So even though the logo itself looks okay it still makes me grit my teeth a little because of all the other UI changes they've forced on us that make my eyes bleed.
But what really bugs me is that they changed the favicon to match the new logo. I have a habit of doing a google search, opening a couple of the results in new tabs, looking at them, and then jumping back to the google tab to either open some more results or refine the search. So now by habit my brain is looking for the old favicon in the tabs and keeps skipping over the new (and arguably less distinct) favicon. This is a problem that i'm sure i'll get over relatively soon, but it's going to be annoying for the next couple days.
(See? That totally wasn't worth having a Slashdot story to discuss it.)
Re: (Score:2)
As for the browser logo, a rainbow "G" on a white field looks more like the logo for a superhero for the gay and lesbian community than the logo for a technology company.
Sans-Serif (Score:3)
They basically changed the typeface from a Serif typeface to a non-serif typeface. Why? Because more people access Google from their tiny telephone screens, where the serifs get lost anyhow.
Re: (Score:2)
Because more people access Google from their tiny telephone screens, where the serifs get lost anyhow.
Small screens still have lower resolution than print, to be sure, but with reasonable anti-aliasing any modern small display will never "lose the serifs". But serifs are an odd on a title/header font anyhow - they're a tool to make it less fatiguing to read large blocks of text, irrelevant to logos.
Re: (Score:2)
Serifs on small displays or blocks of text are for readability. But for titles and headers, they are simply for style. There are two points of view style-wise. The first is that serifs are "classy" and sans-serifs are "childish". See the Wall Street Journal masthead for example. The other is that serifs are "old-fashioned" and "stodgy" while sans-serifs are "fun" and "exciting". This is obviously the view that Google holds, and they felt that their serif logo was holding them back. I happen to hold the form
Re: (Score:2)
Fair point. But then, I think that every "dot-com" company name with "OO" in it is a kids name to begin with. Stupid branding fads.
Re: (Score:2)
Anyhow, the problem that I have with sans-serif fonts is that they look childish. That's what you see in books for children, when they are learning to read.
Yep, and that's only compounded by the fact that the current logo animation has a child's hand initially drawing the logo in crayon before it morphs into its final form. Did they accidentally roll out a logo designed for some previously non-existent "Google Kids" service?
Slashdot uses Arial and VW uses VAG (Score:2)
Anyhow, the problem that I have with sans-serif fonts is that they look childish.
From Slashdot's CSS [fsdn.com]: body { margin: 0; font:13px/1.5 Arial,sans-serif; background: rgb(204,204,204);} Or is Slashdot likewise childish? Is Volkswagen's branding [wikipedia.org] childish?
That's what you see in books for children, when they are learning to read.
That's not what I remember seeing for the text in The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. It looks like Times [licdn.com].
Big fat who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not a new logo (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a new logo, it's just a long-running doodle.
Re: (Score:2)
I see this article as validation of Slashdot (Score:2)
Particularly Slashdot's continuing effort to rebrand itself as something (anything) different from "News for nerds, stuff that matters."
Because really. Google redid their marketing? GASP.
I'm facepalming and eyerolling here, Slashdot. Well done.
I wonder what Reddit says about all of this.
Screw the Logo: (Score:2)
I want to know if they follow their motto or is that just glossy cover for "We are a private NSA data slurper?"
Re: (Score:2)
Why didn't the old logo work? (Score:2)
As you’ll see, we’ve taken the Google logo and branding, which were originally built for a single desktop browser page, and updated them for a world of seamless computing across an endless number of devices and different kinds of inputs (such as tap, type and talk).
Since people already were using Google across an endless number of devices with the old logo, why was this new logo needed? I could see the old logo just fine, why is this new logo needed?
I get that they wanted to refresh the look of the logo, but their claim that it's because users use Google on mobile devices seems specious.
As an aside, why has the Slashdor "quote bar" that delineates quoted text faded away to such a light grey that it's barely visible against the white background? Maybe it's just my brow
Re: (Score:2)
I'm with you, I don't see how their new logo conveys how people "interact with Google products across many different platforms, apps and devices-sometimes all in a single day" any more or less than the old one did. It's a logo. It says "Google." Nothing about the old logo or the new one infers usage from a desktop PC, a phone, a tablet, or anything else, and they could have added the new microphone icon and whatever else without changing the logo. It's their brand to play with, but the justification doesn't
shit (Score:4, Insightful)
the angle of the slant at the end of the 'g' is also inconsistant with the slant at the end of the 'e'
Re: looks broken (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. I like bright colors, but a 16x16 favicon isn't the place for visual distraction. A solid blue 'G' would work much better.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm reminded of this recent blog entry [frerejones.com] by (well-known typographer) Tobias Frere-Jones, in which he addresses the topic of optical equality vs. mathematical equality, and how two different strokes that may have the same width as you would measure them with a ruler can look entirely different in width to the human eye.
Google would do well to pay attention to him, since those Os look ridiculously fat when sitting next to the capital G. And the crossbar for the G doesn't seem to sit next to the O in any sort of
Re: (Score:2)
DDG FTW. (Score:2, Interesting)
Duck duck go baby, for the win. I would have never known about this if not for this article as it's been years since I've touched a Google service and they've become hugely irrelevant in my life.
But i went and looked at the new logo, not impressed. And still not getting why people wish to live and work in a Google tracked alternate reality bubble. Between Google, WinX and OSX, I can only say thank the lord for Mint, Mate, and all you great open source upstream maintainers out there that make my small pri
SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
These things are definitely trendy. Remember the late 90s when there was a trend in corporate naming towards neologisms using certain syllables? We got Verizon, Altria, Avaya, etc. I seem to recall writing a script that could generate such names, and they all looked plausible. I think the script could generate 1000s of possible combinations, so it was pretty spooky when it actually generated Altria.
Re: (Score:2)
No idea what "Qwikster" does. Burn money quickly? I forgot to mention the king of those awful names: Accenture. The only way I can ever remember that is to google Anderson Consulting, which pulls up the name-change story. OK.. had to look up Qwikster... it was apparently a failed initiative by Netflix. BTW, Netflix is a great name. It practically sums up their whole business model, right there in the name. It makes sense. It's easy to remember and pronounce. It sounds like English, not a Yoga chan
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If Netflix had been named in 1999, it'd be Vidato... OK... googling... LOL, some furniture company in Europe uses that.
It was named in 1999 [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
"Lexmark" was beginning to get obscure. (though it means "word write")
That, and the fact that they are headquartered in Lexington, KY.
Just like the Hooters logo now (Score:3)
All Google needs now is a good sexual harassment story and some enterprising young graphic artist will add the Hooters "owl eyes" to the new Google logo.
the last E is why they did it (Score:4, Funny)
see how they pushed the E up slightly into a tilted angle? Now it looks like a sarcastic pacman smiley.
http://www.femoticons.net/imag... [femoticons.net]
Remember when (Score:2)
>> Maybe they hired someone an paid $100,000 to do it, and he went and selected a different font in 30 seconds of work
Remember when Gap did that? I'll bet they paid more that $100K for their turd, making Google's font change a bargain!.
http://adage.com/article/behin... [adage.com]
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi... [bbc.com]
Concern (Score:2)
When it comes to Google, its logo, its apps and its services, my concern can be measured in micro give-a-shits and I'm working on nano-technology.
Missed a Spot (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just marketing bullshit, but I do think it's funny that an article about google's new font uses an image tag that has the old font.
Why not ... (Score:2)
Google Changes Logo (Score:2)
I changed my underwear today. And not a moment too soon.
Must be Wednesday.... (Score:1)
Google changed it's logo yet again......
Happens so often.. how is this news anymore?
Marissa Mayer purge (Score:2)
It's gender neutral now (Score:1)
In-house design team hiring? (Score:1)
Protected font (Score:1)
To prevent people from downloading and re-using a font? Or do I not recognize the font because I'm simply one to whom all fonts look the same?
see the Anonymous post above:
Obligatory XKCD
https://xkcd.com/915/ [xkcd.com]
Would you like a cookie? (Score:2)
Seriously, this isn't a big deal. Why is everyone making a big deal of this?
Specifically, why is Google making a big deal of this? When Intel changed its logo hardly anyone noticed.
"Logo Change" again (Score:2)
Why do stories about branding changes, without fail, call it a "logo change"? And usually coupled with complaints such as "What? They changed the font on the logo? I Bet someone made a lot of money for that genius move!"
"Branding" != "Logo". The logo is almost always *part of* a branding change, but it is almost never the *extent* of a branding change.
Branding includes all logos (not just the one which shows the parent company's name), colour schemes, phrasing ("tone of voice"), types of packaging, the way
very impressive (Score:2)
Thanks to Heineken (Score:2)
The slanted e looks a lot like the one in Heineken logo [wikipedia.org] (which is already very old). The Google designers probably did their brain storm session in a bar...
Looks like IE (Score:2)
This isn't about the Logo. It's about control. (Score:1)
Only two people pointed out that a logo change is *not* the item worth paying attention to.
It's about changing the company's operating philosophy while shifting public perception so as to make the transition comfortable.
However, several people here *did* pick up on the psychological association, which is almost absolutely deliberate...
It looks like a pre-school, Fischer Price toy store logo.
It's for babies.
Now ponder *that*.
Also, pay attention to the new style of filtering. For instance, a mont
Re: (Score:1)
Even the introductory animation was done with the "for Babies" directive in mind.
Remember what it was? Go look.
Google but ... (Score:1)
Google steps back to go forward (Score:1)
They've removed the shadows, flattened it out, and now they've removed the serifs so that it'll look good on more devices....Brilliant! Now my Windows 3.1 PC with NCSA Mosaic can load Google faster and not get bogged down with what would otherwise be a resource hog of a logo! Thank you Google for being so considerate.
Google you have now almost caught up with Microsoft for a flat uninspired logo that takes me back to the DOS days with monochrome monitors. All you have to do now is make it one color. Come on,
Re: (Score:1)
Slashdot fixed that vulnerability a long time ago. And boy did it leave workers vulnerable.
Re: (Score:1)
Oh and I forgot to mention that they took the picture off of that site a long time ago, it's no longer to be found there.
Re: (Score:2)
I can see it perfectly fine.
Re: (Score:2)
When they grow-up, serifs will be the new rage and another round of logo changes...
In the 1990s camel case (or whatever you're supposed to call them) logos like NeXT were the cool thing. In the 2020s I predict that mixed serif/sans seriff logos will become trendy.
That will really get the graphic designers and font nerds annoyed.