Google announced a new logo today, and surprisingly it looks like more than the usual empty design exercise.
The logo itself does represent the most striking change in many years for Google, most of all in its plainness and the custom font's lack of serifs, the little lines at the end of character strokes. As Google put it in a blog post delving into the details of the redesign, that's a reflection of the need for logos to be readable on all manner of devices and screen sizes, and sans serif scales up and down better than serif fonts:
The Google logo has always had a simple, friendly, and approachable style. We wanted to retain these qualities by combining the mathematical purity of geometric forms with the childlike simplicity of schoolbook letter printing. Our new logotype is set in a custom, geometric sans-serif typeface and maintains the multi-colored playfulness and rotated ‘e’ of our previous mark—a reminder that we’ll always be a bit unconventional.
But while it's arguably much more modern than the previous Google logo, the purpose goes far beyond a simpler look. In short, Google has redesigned the logo for the mobile era. Google has struggled along with other older Web companies such as
So in a sense, the logo design was much more mission-critical than one might imagine it would be. One telling detail about how much mobile played into the design: One variant of the new logo takes only 305 bytes of data, compared with about 14,000 for the previous version, which had required a clumsy text-based approximation to be used on low-bandwidth connections.
Even more noticeable than the new font: The logo is now animated. Again, though, it's not just for show. As the logo dissolves into swirling Google-colored dots, it reflects how you can interact, and are interacting in real time, with Google services, whether it's by typing, tapping, or talking:
The Google dots are a dynamic and perpetually moving state of the logo. They represent Google’s intelligence at work and indicate when Google is working for you. We consider these unique, magic moments. A full range of expressions were developed including listening, thinking, replying, incomprehension, and confirmation. While their movements might seem spontaneous, their motion is rooted in consistent paths and timing, with the dots moving along geometric arcs and following a standard set of snappy easing curves.
Accompanying the logo change are other changes in how people can use both search and the Google Now intelligent personal assistant. As Google says in yet another post on its Inside Search blog:
On Android, we’ve also updated the “home page” of our Google app (which you can always get to by tapping the new, colorful G icon). On days when there’s a doodle, you’ll find it at the top of the page and Now cards will be organized by category so you can find what you need more predictably. As your day progresses, Now cards shift and change size so that the most important ones stand out.
In a larger sense, the new logo is actually the first truly digital representation of the company: It's no longer static but virtually alive to the services available behind it. That should set the stage for more seamless combinations of services in the future. "It speaks to the future potential as well as the current functionalities of the Google brand," Connie Birdsall, creative director at the brand strategy and design firm Lippincott, said in an email. "The four dots are really beautifully choreographed to communicate with us 'human beings' - it is actually pretty magical and 100% universal."
You can read more in Google's detailed post on the redesign, and here's the TL/DR video on YouTube:
