Google's ingenuity knows no bounds. That is a known fact what with all those google doodles that are so interactive you just can't wait for the next one to come out. But after unveiling their brand new logo as a kick off for their makeover, Google gets you even more impressed.
Shedding from a serif to a more modern sans serif typeface but still faithful to the same color combination of blue, red, yellow and green that has defined the company since 1998, this leading tech giant is keeping up with the hype of the mobile market by adapting its desktop-era logo to a slicker redesign.
Six simple letters on a plain white page. That's the simplest description you can give to Google's newest logo.
The new logo is not just a new logo. Google reportedly created the look as a way to introduce its new "identity family," showing the different ways Google works for consumers, including mobile phones, TVs, watches, dashboard in cars and desktops — a one-way ticket to everything.
You can view the newest elements here, as presented by The Next Web.
The official blog of Google takes us back to the history of the search engine's logo in this video.
Even if the new Google logo brings seamless computing across an endless number of devices with different kinds of inputs like tapping, typing and talking, the reception of the logo was not as how people expected it to be.
"It's gotten clean, which means it's legible and easier to reproduce. From a practical point, I can understand that, but I think they lost some visual cues," said Mark Fox, who teaches at California College of the Arts.
"Generally, it's cleaner, but by being cleaner and simpler, it's lost some of its distinction," said Angie Wang, a professor who teaches typography also at California College of the Arts. "In simplifying, they've sort of eradicated the humanistic tendencies. Is that good or bad? It depends on what they're trying to achieve."
Supporters and critics of Google's new logo agree on one thing though: The new customized font is unlikely to cause such an uproar.
"When you're a brand as big as Google, it's scary to introduce a new logo but it's still very on-brand. I don't feel like I'm disconnecting. They still kept the core essence. That's a hard thing to do," said Brian Hoff, a former Apple worker who now runs his own digital design firm.
"It's very drastic," said Matt Luckhurst on Mercury News, who has worked on rebranding projects for Airbnb and Spotify and helped craft the logo for Facebook's new personal assistant. "This looks like something made in 2015. It's clearly designed to be friendly, to be legible. It feels very elemental, like learning how to write something at school."
Luckhurst said it also aligns with Alphabet, the newly formed umbrella company of which Google is now a wholly owned subsidiary.
Despite all these issues however, Google admitted, "this isn't the first time we've changed our look and it probably won't be the last, but we think today's update is a great reflection of all the ways Google works."
Meanwhile, before any of these changes, the tech company announced that it would rebrand itself as Alphabet. This new holding company, will preside over a collection of companies, the largest of which will be Google as mentioned earlier.
For the meantime, we'll just have to see the new design roll out across their products in the coming months. No less from the company who has become its own verb in the dictionary, aye?
