Google’s New Logos
Google recently announced the redesign of its logos for its entire suite of products. As the workplace is continually moving towards remote, Google stepped up its efforts in expanding its tools for remote collaboration and video-conference. Their recent Gmail update included Google Hangouts on their bottom navigation — indicative of how crucial video conferencing has become to their product offering. With growing competition from Zoom and Microsoft, it was understandable that Google devoted a ton of resources to continue to expand hangouts.
The goal of Google’s redesign makes sense, they want to unify the visual language of all of the apps in their suite. As a product designer, it makes sense. I’m all about consistency, design systems, and ensuring your products are easily scalable. However, these logos don’t work — at least initially. I’m sure I’ll adjust to it but at an initial glance, it doesn't fit my mental model of Google’s suite.
All of the logos share a common color palette and all look the same, making it hard to distinguish one product from another. If I’m looking to access my google drive I may accidentally click on google docs or even hangouts. I’ve been an avid user of Gmail and its logo has become iconic and synonymous with trust. But now Gmail looks like every other product in Google Suite serving as a constant reminder that this is a Google product.
No doubt I’ll adjust to these new icons and colors, but in the meantime, it’ll take a while to adjust my mental model and embrace them. When you’re a large tech giant you have the power to force these changes without much push back, justifying decisions on mountains of data and research.
