Google debut aserif - barren logotype today — the first veridical change to its logotype since 1999 . And although it ’s much prettier than the 16 - year - erstwhile wordmark , the company claimed it was more about functionality than expect : The Google logotype has become more and more baffling throughout its existence , and it had everything to do with those serifs .
First , a speedy fuze on seriph : The text you ’re read right here , has serifs , the petite decorative line of descent attached to the edges of many of the letters . They help your eyes with legibility when you ’ve got a lot of textbook . But serifs are not as useful on text that needs to be show at many different sizes , like , um , logos . Here ’s the before and after of Google ’s logotype . See the serifs disappear ?
So if you watch the phylogeny of Google ’s logo in this video , it ’s all serif for 17 days . you may see it get simpler and wide-eyed , but through mostly stylistic decision . First , that so-90s blow up balloon case . Then the Y2K - geological era edition with the bevel edges . Then the same logotype , flattened , thanks to Google ’s own Material Design voice communication evangelizingflat design .
But after atiny tweak a yr ago , it was vindicated the designer were sort of stuck . Google ’s logotype had a heavy problem .
Serifs don’t scale
First and first , scalability . Google ’s previous logo did not shrink well . A seriph - y “ Google ” with all those nubbins is not going to be readable at little sizes , for the same grounds thatHelvetica sucks for CRT screen text . The lank letterforms start to disappear , and when it ’s really tiny , it ’s basically useless . The G almost turns into a C. The l look like i. Coogie !
older favicon ( it front like an 8 ! ) and the new sans serif G , which look like a one thousand even at half the sizing
This is the same problem that many Word have on smartphone and smartwatch screens , of course , so designers make a version of the wordmark that ’s just a exclusive varsity letter , known as a favicon . Google had a drear lowercase serif “ g ” for just these occasions , but it had the same problems as the wordmark ( nubbins , spindly ) . Now , the new odd basal - colored capital “ G ” will be used as a favicon , and unlike lotion ( Google+ , Google Maps , etc . ) each have their own customized deoxyguanosine monophosphate :
honest-to-god seriph Google Plus ( what the hell is that half - gram ? ) and the new Google Plus logotype
Again and again , you ’ll see — seriph begone .
Serifs suck up bandwidth
So the Modern sans serif G favicon take upkeep of the musical scale way out . But the logo itself — the wordmark — still require to be fixed . When viewed at downhearted declaration , the logo go to put down in the same way . Google actually has bang this for age and had even put through a workaround for their own identity . Those using low - bandwidth connection would see not the image version of the logo but a tight textual matter estimate . Well , not even that close !
rather of giving their broken - bandwidth users a crappy experience , a alternative was made to not only redesign the logo but also father a newfangled logo using a transmitter - base Indian file case called a Scalable Vector Graphic ( SVG ) , which was populated across the company for consistency . SVG is the best filing cabinet format for Word ; it ’s the fashion all logotype will appear soon . But Google ’s designers also take that without the serifs , the fresh logo was a smaller data file size , meaning it can be watch just fine by Google ’s blue - bandwidth friends :
lose the serifs is a big part of makes Google more accessible to all user , compose the Google Design squad . No more commit the lowly - bandwidth user the myopic end of the typography stick :
This helps us make the pattern picture element perfect everywhere it ’s used , and it permit us to optimize these assets for size of it and response time , including work up a special variant of our full - color logo that is only 305 bytes , compared to our existing logo at ~14,000 bytes . The erstwhile logo , with its intricate serifs and larger file sizing , required that we serve a text - based bringing close together of the logo for low bandwidth connections . The new logo ’s lose weight file sizing avoids this workaround and the consistency has tremendous shock when you regard our goal of making Google more accessible and utile to users around the world , include the next billion .
So that last part sounds a little B vitamin . Google has been in use pushing its “ next billion ” agenda with cock for people with connectivity outcome , likeoptimizing websites for text and offline browsing potentiality for videos and mathematical function . It sounds humanitarian — and it has great intentions , I ’m sure!—but it is all just a architectural plan to get more Google products into more hands in more emerging economy , of course .
Is redesign the logo really just so the next billion can have the same experience as the current billion ( which I ’m pretty sure no one really deal about ) ? It ’s also remindful of whenFacebook simplified its logoever so slightly ( and they also like to make these kinds of “ next billion ” promulgation ) .
So… are serifs over?
But Google could have simply redrawn the serif typeface as an SVG , right ? Did they really need to plane off the serifs from a functioning position ? I asked designer Khoi Vinh , who recently join Adobe as Principal clothes designer . He sees it as yet another model of Google ’s engineering - driven decisions .
“ I think part of what Google , as a monumental organization populated by incredibly wise mass ( register : dweeb ) , needs to do in ordering to make a bounteous immanent faulting like this is to settle it in nonsubjective benefits , ” he says . “ So what make sense to an engineer when you ’re redoing a logo ? You ’ll save time and bytes . ”
Remember that history from a few years back about Googletesting 41 shades of bluefor its search bar , and going against the good word of its designer because a certain amobarbital sodium was deemed more clickable by the data ? This is a more advanced interpretation of that , says Vinh . “ I candidly imagine that if they went with a more gut instinct approach it would have been fine , ” he say . “ But the bigger story about Google and design for the preceding several age — since Larry Page took over — has been if they can retrofit figure into their org . This is a great representative of how they grok plan . ”
Yes , Google is takinggreat stride to embrace invention — the designers spill the beans about how these choices match into theMaterial Design ethos , Google ’s big push button for nominate designing more robust — but they still have torationalize all of it with data .
Still , there ’s something to be said about seriph and readability . Is the age of the serif logotype over ? Why would a company add the typographical equivalent weight of bell and whistles when those otiose spindles will have to be shed eventually for filmdom optimization ? We ’ve seen thesame changes happening in other tech logos , specially the ones that will necessitate to be summoned on a smartphone or smartwatch : simpler , streamlined , always sans serif .
But Vinh does n’t think serifs will ever be totally pass . “ serif are sort of like men ’s neckties . Movies have long prefigure their demise because in the future everything would be about efficiency , ” says Vinh . “ But they never go away , because they cue us that we ’re human . ”
Googlelogotype
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