The Google Logo: Before and After

by Riley Carroll, O’More College of Design Alum

People seem to only embrace change when it’s expected. Facebook is a great example. Facebook constantly changes its news feed feature and how it works. From what I’ve noticed, people rarely respond favorably to this. Whether it’s a positive or negative change (which is purely subjective, of course), if the change is unexpected, people are less likely to embrace it. We’ve seen a lot of these changes in the world of design this year, but the biggest one so far is the re-brand of everyone’s go-to search engine, Google.

Since the company’s launch in 1998, Google’s logo has become ubiquitous – so ubiquitous that we use the company’s name as a verb in our everyday conversations. Perhaps the most iconic Google logo is the custom serif that Ruth Kedar designed in 1999, and I’m still a fan of it. If you look at where Google was before Kedar’s branding efforts, it was a wonderful change. Her mark was lighter, had less murky shadows within the characters, and overall reflected the vision and image of the progressive tech company that Google wanted to be. And it lasted 16 years! Okay, yes, it had a few modifications. They reduced the drop shadow in 2010, and in 2013 the logo went in a more ‘flat’ design direction to add an element of versatility to the mark. By dropping the shadows within the characters, readability and scalability of the mark increased. And I’m sure they went flat to keep up with the fruit stand down the road (cough cough, Apple).
Now let’s talk about the new mark.

I love the new Google logo. As expected, Google has made many smart decisions in a branding effort that has taken a lot of strategic planning. Most notably, the new re-brand keeps the only visual element the brand needs to keep – color. Google has tremendous equity in the color pattern they’ve used since their start. The fact that an innovative tech company can leverage such an elementary color scheme to gain brand equity is INCREDIBLE. To everyone who says “Hey, that new Google mark looks like refrigerator magnets my kid would use!” I wold say to them, “You’re right! And Google is capitalizing on the flexibility that come with simplicity.” I would expect nothing less from a company who cornered the market on basic colors in a logo.

A lot of people have responded negatively to the new Google brand. I totally get it.. There are some visual factors within the branding that don’t make immediate sense. The geometric proportions within the standalone ‘G’ aren’t what you’d first expect. The yellow portion is smaller than the rest when there’s an opportunity to create equal color proportions that might go along better with the geometric feel of the brand. But Google is Google for many reasons, and their innovative design is one of them. There are many factors that go into a branding or rebranding process, most of which the general public isn’t privy to. Generally, it’s those factors that impact the process the most.

Take a look at how Google Announced their new logo on their Facebook page.

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