Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2018972097_microsoftlogo23.html

by cleverjake • 14 years ago

320 231 14 years ago

seattletimes.nwsource.com

quarterto2• 14 years ago

I... don't hate it. What's wrong with me? It's bold, it's fresh, it does a pretty damn good job of shrugging off the Microsoft of the past 25 years.

astrodust5• 14 years ago

You mean the one that utterly dominated the computer market and made money by the truckload when other companies could barely survive?

Well, at least that's over now.

pyre3• 14 years ago

  > made money by the truckload when other companies
  > could barely survive

The other companies would probably have fared better of Microsoft wasn't dominating the market. This phrasing makes it sound like the market wasn't a zero-sum game.

macspoofing• 14 years ago

There's always someone making "truckloads" and someone barely surviving. Every industry, every era.

quarterto2• 14 years ago

The one with the antitrust lawsuits, yeah.

Karunamon• 14 years ago

Somehow I doubt their logo had much to do with this.

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

I think you could only shrug the last 25 years off if you changed the word as well.

debacle4• 14 years ago

It's also simple, but still utilitarian in that Microsoft style.

It actually reminds me very much of the Wii logo.

calinet6• 14 years ago

I think it's fine.

It's just that it's... only fine.

It's perfect for Microsoft!

discreteevent• 14 years ago

I don't like it. I like mimimalism but this clean minimal look that's virtually everywhere (as people try to outdo each other in simplicity) is just a fashion. You know already that there is going to be a backlash against this as there always has been in the past (how long did the Bauhaus last?) and then this will be outdated. Also the primary colours are a bit sixties'ish and shortly will look just as dated as anything from that time. Its just the wheel going around with some hailing each revolution as, well, a revolution!

contextfree• 14 years ago

So you're saying that it's a style from the 20s-60s and also a passing fad? :)

madoublet• 14 years ago

If it was minimalism for the sake of minimalism, then maybe. But, minimalism in the case of Windows Phone and 8 serves the purpose of bringing content forward. So, I think it will have lasting appeal.

snowwrestler• 14 years ago

I love the whole direction of Microsoft's graphic design these days, and I've had Macs at home exclusively for at least 10 years.

I think Microsoft is doing a great job of trading on the emotional value of colors. Apple rebuilt their company by bringing color to computing (remember the iMac and iBook), but then went away from that in almost every way, sucking the color out of all their products except for a few iPods. It's very sleek and elegant, but let's face it, colors are fun too.

hk_kh2• 14 years ago

How is the top menu[1] ok? Grey background with clear blue icons? I would understand with skype because it's not their logo, but even their own blue icons look terrible with that background.

Also, the controls on the carousel[2] are off.

This is not just fanboy hate, but for a company the size of Microsoft, their homepage should matter. These two examples show that they just don't care.

Unrelated to this, I find the metro style interesting for touch devices, but adopting it as the look of the whole company dumbs down their entire product. Also, the font looks to me like a futurist Comic Sans.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/a9JzT.png

[2] http://i.imgur.com/rnjJM.png

xanadohnt• 14 years ago

Just an FYI (and you'll probably hate it more), but the controls(2) are not off. This is part of the new metro sensibility[1].

[1] http://www.ditii.com/2012/05/22/github-windows-released-supp... (second image down)

sandis• 14 years ago

Looks more like a new version of Windows logo to me.

zerostar07• 14 years ago

I assume it's intentional. Isn't OSX full of apples here and there?

state• 14 years ago

But Apple isn't full of OSX logos. It seems weird that the windows association needs to stay in their primary mark.

tjogin• 14 years ago

No, not really. But this is more an example of a product brand becoming the company brand, not the other way around. Apple is a rather poor example of this, as they are quite careful with their brand (for instance, changing the "Apple key" to the "command key" back in the day so as to not "abuse" the brand).

Sun changing their stock symbol to JAVA would be a better example.

vannevar• 14 years ago

It's interesting they would make a point of incorporating the old Windows logo. Microsoft is a company trying to reinvent itself, and the industry consensus is that Windows has an uncertain future at best. It has failed completely in the phone and tablet markets that would seem to be the future of consumer computing. So is this a statement of defiance or a company in denial?

corporalagumbo2• 14 years ago

i think Microsoft hasn't even gotten started in the phone and tablet markets yet. thats coming soon. should be interesting.

astrodust5• 14 years ago

What the hell is this? Are they trying to take the Gap approach and turn out a turd so terrible that designers storm the campus and flood them with better logos?

VMG• 14 years ago

Interesting... I've never seen this before: http://i.imgur.com/Ag3fl.jpg

Edit: found better res

fuzzix• 14 years ago

I did vote for that one, but I am listening to 80s metal right now - that may have influenced me.

wprater• 14 years ago

I voted for that one too! Never seen it; spitting image of MegaDeth or Metallica! Haha

stinos• 14 years ago

hell yeah. I'm even tempted to cut out the logo itself from the jpg and use it as a desktop background. Hard to imagine a company now so huge ever used a logo so dark that screams metal all over the place

yawgmoth• 14 years ago

Very heavy metal!

heyjonboy• 14 years ago

Ha, I saw that one and immediately thought Iron Maiden: http://images.wikia.com/logopedia/images/6/69/Iron_maiden_lo...

girlvinyl• 14 years ago

The 1975-1979 logo is neat. I actually really like it. The new one is so boring.

zdw• 14 years ago

The 1980-81 looks like Gates and Balmer were trying to start a Metal band.

jrockway• 14 years ago

Their first song: "Developers".

sudonim• 14 years ago

The logo is O.K. Their homepage http://microsoft.com looks like a mix between a "corporate" website template you'd buy for $50 and a domain squatting page with amazon referral links.

Gosh I want to cheer for microsoft but they make it real hard.

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

It was only this morning that my wife said exactly the same thing about it looking like a domain squatting page (while she was trying to find MSE download on their web site).

brudgers3• 14 years ago

The web came to Microsoft after the IPO. At the time, there were a lot employees with "fuck you money" and the web was still the wild west not a corporate branding commodity. Thus Microsoft's approach has been generally hands off and the first priority has always been to get information out on the web.

The idea of a monolithic website like Apple's or Google's just doesn't apply. It's not part of Microsoft's DNA. Compare:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/home

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/default.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-ed...

http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc184874.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ms376608.aspx

Other than white backgrounds, it's not very consistent.

k3n• 14 years ago

Consistently bad.

bjornsteffanson2• 14 years ago

I understand what mean about it not being part of Microsoft's DNA, but it seems like you're trying to blame Microsoft's poor web presence on its age. How do you then rationalize other pre-Web companies like IBM and Apple who have managed to successfully embrace it?

grueful• 14 years ago

The layout looks rational enough in the context of the tiled GUI layout they're trying to push.

But the top bar could be a few times thicker. It's too cramped. I tried a quick hack increasing the min-height attribute on hpHdr_PriRow to 50px, which gives much nicer proportions.

mitjak• 14 years ago

I agree. It's fairly in line with the new Metro and Phone 7 UIs. Not as polished though:

* In Chrome, the carousel controls at the top right are cut off. Intentional?

* The "For home" and "For work" buttons on the right shrink the margins between themselves and the carousel on hover but never quite bridge the gap, which looks awkward to my eye.

* The carousel is gigantic and hides all the content below it on all but the largest screen resolutions (and I thought Windows 8 is supposed to be running on small portable tablets?).

* The top menu under the logo is extremely cheesy with its thin 1px border on hover, never mind that it's next to invisible next to that massive carousel. When it comes to actually navigating the site to getting the user to Microsoft's products, this menu is failure.

* …

Generally, the entire layout feels a bit like the team that's been responsible for the page for years has been told to 'clone' the newest UI to the best of their abilities.

systems• 14 years ago

i think the worst part about their new homepage is the "Welcome to Microsoft" white bare/space at the top, they could, and should have made better use of that space

DASD• 14 years ago

Not only that but why is "Welcome to Microsoft" an image(png) and not text?

snarfy• 14 years ago

The nav links render like crap in Firefox and Chrome. Of course, it looks fine in IE, which sums up a lot of Microsoft's problems.

colanderman5• 14 years ago

Not to mention the URL… http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx, really? Have they not heard of internal/external URL mapping and Accept-Language?

Not to mention it won't even load for me; I guess they don't cache this stuff either.

rplnt• 14 years ago

What is wrong with that url (except default.aspx)? It's widely used and I like if I'm not forced to some region or locale based on my IP and Accept-Language. Well, I still am but I can change it easily if they give me this url (or even better link on a page).

pbhjpbhj• 14 years ago

I guess it relates to the issue discussed here a day or two ago about redirection ("am I suddenly Japanese" or something like that; should have been "think I'm turning Japanese" ...). The default.aspx could be an affirmation of the backend being used so that when you see that elsewhere you know the server tech is MS, a sort of advertising/brand presence decision.

What I find interesting is that the new logo is not on the en-gb or fr-fr pages in the header bar and they use the old Microsoft trademark typeface. They also use the old Windows logo on, it seems, all but the en-us page. Complete mess in terms of brand presentation.

emddudley• 14 years ago

Actually I noticed that they've recently started leaving off the .aspx extension on their MSDN pages.

For example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tt0cf3sx

silverbax882• 14 years ago

No idea why they wouldn't just use their own MVC code that's now backed into the Visual Studio IDE.

rhplus• 14 years ago

LCIDs in the URI remove ambiguity about which language to serve (do you use Accept-Language? Or IP sniffing? Or user prefs in cookies?), they remove ambiguity about which storefront to show for a market and - most importantly - they make alternate language/markets indexable by search engines because each has a distinct URI.

Why are Apple, IBM, Amazon, Google doing it if it's such a terrible design?

http://www.ibm.com/us/en/

http://store.apple.com/us

http://www.apple.com/ca/fr/mac/

http://support.google.com/adwords/?hl=en

http://www.amazon.ca/fr/

silverbax882• 14 years ago

At the risk of sounding snarky, not all change is good change.

Of course, it's not like Microsoft EVER had a decent or even remotely stylish logo. The bigger concern I would have over the logo is the website, which is amateurish. Honestly, if I did not know this was Microsoft, I would think it was a startup company that paid $50 for a website template, as you stated, and not a very good one.

dhimes• 14 years ago

The web page actually looks ok on my phone. However, putting m.microsoft.com into FF on my laptop just belched xml all over my screen.

its_so_on• 14 years ago

this comment is great. I didn't believe you and clicked through, with your comment still ringing in my mind - I had to laugh. you nailed it.

rkwz2• 14 years ago

I wonder why they didn't choose this logo (colorful tiles) for Windows.

rkwz2• 14 years ago

Here's the intro video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzkZWvAJUr0

uvdiv• 14 years ago

Microsoft should sue the Seattle Times for desecrating their beautiful logo with compression artifacts.

edit: I retract that, Microsoft is doing the very same thing:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/08/23...

Livven3• 14 years ago

Same with the Windows 8 logo. Without the artifacts it would look so much better.

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive...

drcube• 14 years ago

Interesting that as soon as they dump the old Windows logo, they just start using it as the company logo, minus the swoops.

That said, however, I like it. I'm a big fan of color, and, while not a big fan of Windows, I've always liked its logo. In fact, while I probably won't ever install or use it extensively, I've really been liking the bold, primary color design of Windows 8.

nilsbunger• 14 years ago

My first thought wasn't Windows, it's Live Tiles. It seems to have the allusion of Windows (the past) and "the design style formerly known as Metro" (the future).

All in all, a big improvement!

Only one thing: I can't believe it doesn't render properly in mobile safari on MS home page! Bottom line gets clipped...

rrouse• 14 years ago

They should go the "Prince" route. They should just adopt the 4 square logo as the official name for "The design style formerly known as Metro".

Brilliant

zafriedman• 14 years ago

The article starts of by saying that a lot is at stake when a company rolls out a new logo. I'd like to point out the Microsoft has, either intentionally or unintentionally, been piloting this logo-style in their products for the past few years, which is ostensibly a lower-risk proposition. Rolling out their parent brand logo to conform to this arguably successful re-branding that their individual software products have underwent over the past three or so years seems like a reasonably sound decision. Furthermore, if Microsoft has intentionally been piloting this new brand on parts of their business that are subordinate to the brand as a whole, then I'd have to say bravo for likely reducing a huge business risk in the making of a relatively permanent, long-term decision.

GiraffeNecktie• 14 years ago

Very ubuntish.

mbesto7• 14 years ago

You know the greatest lesson I learned from the tv show The Wire? When your brand lacks credibility you make a change to the brand.[1][2] Good move by Microsoft.

On other hand, I'm still trying to grok why Twitter changed it's logo recently[3]? Was something inherently being tarnished about the Twitter brand? As far as I know, the answer is NO.

I'm going to make a major assumption here, but I think it had to do with it being driven by a Creative Director and not by a Marketing (i.e. Business) person. The blog post and title at least reads that way.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undertow_(The_Wire)#Barksdale_t...

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbbZc2pab9k

[3] http://blog.twitter.com/2012/06/taking-flight-twitterbird.ht...

debacle4• 14 years ago

How does Microsoft lack credibility?

thoughtpalette• 14 years ago

Credibility's not the issue. Stagnation is.

mbesto7• 14 years ago

I'm assuming I don't have to explain to you the sentiment over Microsoft's product base (consumer mainly) in the past 5-10 years in comparison to it's biggest competitor, Apple, right?

untog4• 14 years ago

So when Apple change their name from Apple Computers it was because they lacked credibility? No, of course not. But because it's Microsoft everyone throws this nonsense around.

Rebranding is something that all companies do at varying times their lives. When you haven't done it in 25 years... yeah, it's probably time for a refresh. Trends change.

mbesto7• 14 years ago

You really think a business person with real money on the line makes a dramatic change like this based on the notion of "When you haven't done it in 25 years... yeah, it's probably time for a refresh. Trends change."

That would be mind baffling...

notatoad4• 14 years ago

Microsoft isn't changing their brand, they're updating their brand. It's something virtually every company does from time to time, and it's not a sign of the apocalypse. Microsoft isn't escaping any of their past with this change, they're still very recognizable as the same company as before.

Your assumptions about the reason for updating a brand are even wronger in the case of Twitter. They didn't update their brand because it was weak, quite the opposite. The twitter brand is currently so strong, it afforded them the unique opportunity to drop the words from their trademark and use just an icon. Twitter's rebranding was them stepping up to an exclusive club of the worlds most highly recognizable brands.

mbesto7• 14 years ago

> Microsoft isn't changing their brand, they're updating their brand.

Semantics.

> it's not a sign of the apocalypse.

I'm sorry if I implied it's a sign of the apocalypse. I didn't mean it that way. The point is Microsoft has suffered greatly due to the massive success of Apple. This is no news to anyone. They're not going to die anytime soon, but they have a MASSIVE threat. The Wire's portrayal of the character's brand and that of Worldcom, are not a 1:1 match, I agree, but the theory is the same.

My point was to draw the real reasoning behind branding and why companies shift and update brands. I've personally been trapped in this before, and thought "God that logo looks like shit! That company, or my company, should change it! They would do so much better if they did!" Branding/Logo is about associations of an image with the company and its values. When the values of the company deteriorate, lack credibility, etc, than the association of the logo starts portraying those negative values (or lack thereof).

For example: How many people here think Google should change it's logo? The logo itself lacks any sort of design principles and very clearly was created by a techie with lack of graphic design. So why on earth hasn't Google changed it?

> Your assumptions about the reason for updating a brand are even wronger in the case of Twitter.Twitter's rebranding was them stepping up to an exclusive club of the worlds most highly recognizable brands.

I apologize, I wasn't aware that the logo before explicitly included the name. Regardless...

> Twitter's rebranding was them stepping up to an exclusive club of the worlds most highly recognizable brands.

8 of the top 10 brands in the world have their name in their logo...[1] What exclusive club are you talking about?

[1] http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/07/top_brands/source/1....

SoftwareMaven2• 14 years ago

I think of Twitter's logo change as the time they turned from "openish tool for loosely connecting millions" to "closed tool for broadcasting to millions". I wonder if that was intentional.

toddmorey2• 14 years ago

Jokingly: That logo cost them $50 [1]

My real questions are whether there will be a one-color variant, whether the symbol will be allowed to be displayed without the type, and how you could ever secure international trademark on four squares. My guess is that you'd have to be, well, Mircosoft. More than the logo designers, I'm really impressed by the legal team. My trademark lawyers would laugh at me.

[1] http://www.bestlookinglogos.com/2009/07/four-square-logo/

Edit: fixed to read 'international trademark'

Jabbles2• 14 years ago

Should I make a FourSquare reference?

I'm just amazed that the colours are a rotation of Google's Favicon... Red Green Blue Yellow. (Alright so it's orange, not red.)

https://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&site=imgh...

Is there any way to get a compressed google search URL that's not a redirect?

K2h• 14 years ago

I was thinking logo may be more appropriate to FourSquare as well.

jgroome• 14 years ago

As far as I know, the only query string that really matters is "q". There's also "tbm", which seems to indicate the type of search to run.

So: https://www.google.com/search?q=google+icon&tbm=isch

Livven3• 14 years ago

Um, ever seen the old Windows logo?

tptacek2• 14 years ago

Those are the Windows colors. They predate Google.

bobsil1• 14 years ago

Both MS and Google colors come from children's blocks, to convey ease of use.

philwelch• 14 years ago

makmanalp• 14 years ago

I'd have preferred a thinner, longer variation of the font like they had in their win8 demos or Zune menus. This one looks a bit short and stocky imho.

chuinard• 14 years ago

I wonder if that independent Microsoft re-design seen on HN a few weeks ago - http://www.minimallyminimal.com/journal/2012/7/3/the-next-mi... - had anything to do with this.

karlshea• 14 years ago

I doubt it, this was probably in the works for much longer than a couple of weeks.

That said, I like the minimally minimal redesign much better.

davidedicillo• 14 years ago

Something I noticed: beside the M, the rest of the font is very similar to the font Myriad (the font used by Apple in their logo).

sp3322• 14 years ago

I believe it's Segoe, which Microsoft owns and has been using everywhere lately.

Millennium• 14 years ago

So basically, Segoe is to Myriad as Arial is to Helvetica.

Got it.

dhughes2• 14 years ago

I can see the anti-Apple mentality of this.

Apple icons are glossy this is flat. The icons on an iPad/iPod are small glossy "chicklets" but on Win8 they are flat and large tiles; no black space.

I like the look and the design it's a nice change, as for the inner workings of the OS I have no idea since I only used it briefly in a (non-touchscreen) VM.

untog4• 14 years ago

Different to Apple != anti-Apple

I think it is a tremendous disservice to the amount of work that went into the Metro (or whatever it's called now) interface to describe it as an anti-Apple reaction. It isn't, and not everyone in the tech world bases their entire business around what Apple is or is not doing. It wasn't created to spite the memory of Steve Jobs.

dhughes2• 14 years ago

I'd say different is anti-Apple when you're Microsoft and Apple is your primary competitor your goal is to gain customers, being the same doesn't make sense since it already exists.

A great quote I heard once (not sure who) to paraphrase: Trying to be as good as your competition just makes you equals. To be better you have to exceed beyond what is being done.

NTH• 14 years ago

Yes, it certainly wasn't created to spite Steve Jobs, because Metro shipped with Windows Phones in November 2010, just under a year before he died.

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

Everyone is pretty different visually from apple. Apple is stuck in 2003 with skeuomorphism, glossy buttons, faux wood. They and KDE would get along together great.

Versus Holo in Android, the beauty of Metro or whatever it's called, even GNOME3 and Elementary OS are embracing a minimal, flat-ish design

buro94• 14 years ago

For me... personally, the logo doesn't work.

I am slightly colour blind.

The logo in the article I see just fine, and all of the squares are the same size. And I get it... Metro theme.

The favicon.ico and small logo on Microsoft.com

Those don't fair as well. The red and yellow squares are much larger than the green and blue, and my eyes see a throbbing line around the bottom and left of the red box, and a black line at the bottom of the blue box.

Now... I know that those boxes don't have those lines. For I know what the Metro style guide looks like. But there it is, the logo has not been viewed by anyone colour blind with the ability to have it modified. There should be more space between the boxes when it's shrunk.

The red box is literally 20% wider than the blue to my eyes.

You know how much of the population is colour blind? A very significant chunk.

Also... those colours... very bad choice. When you print this logo (greyscale), all of the colours come out too similar a shade of grey. There is no distinction between them.

pilsetnieks2• 14 years ago

The differing lines and popping squares are not because of your color-blindness, someone did an absolutely terrible job resizing the logo images for the website and preparing the favicon.

Also, rounded corners on the favicon? It's ok to give these jobs to an intern but someone still should check the results before pushing them live.

buro94• 14 years ago

I can take the logo from the homepage, enlarge in gimp, and it's fine to my eyes.

And what with being slightly colour blind, I've learned to suspect that it is probably my vision that is the problem.

untog4• 14 years ago

I'm part of that colour-blind chunk, and I don't see anything like what you're seeing. The squares appear to be an uneven size, but what would that have to do with our lack of ability to see colour?

Colour-blindness comes in a great many varieties, and to be honest, if you're making something involving colour, you're going to displease some of them.

buro94• 14 years ago

Your post and the one below make me think I need to go back to my optician. It's probably overdue, but I can't actually look at the smaller version of the logo without it hurting my eyes a little as they strain to stop the red square from throbbing.

DominikR• 14 years ago

Arguably (for this logo) seemingly wrong proportions are worse than too similar looking shades of grey, since no writing or visual metaphors lost are lost when you convert this logo to greyscale.

And I personally believe that this could (and should) have been worked around in some way since about 7-10% of the population has some kind of color blindness.

tluyben2• 14 years ago

I have the same issues; for me the red is much larger than the rest and the yellow one is pulsating. I have it with everything involving rasters and some colors. Actually some patterns make me nauseous (not this one though).

I'm not bothered much by it, but I avoid, while making things, combinations that make this happen.

I don't know if it is because I am slightly color blind (on tests I can usually read maybe 1 of those blotted spots with letters/digits in them; http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.asp => I can only see the top left one, which is the tester if you're not totally blind I think :), the rest is just random spots. People who don't have this issue might think I cannot see colors at all but I can; it's only in combination it might go wrong.), but it's worse when i'm tired.

The best freak show is a big squared 'tent', but with small squares of 2 horrible colors, like red + green/blue in bright power-saving-lights inside, for instance, a shopping mall and me not having had the best night sleep. Then I see these effects really well and actually have to move away from the offending object quite rapidly.

Edit: I mean 'checkered' not squared, so like http://www.schnittmuster-stoffe.de/images/product_images/pop... but then preferably plastic material, bad, bright colors and preferably so big I cannot look around it.

parkov• 14 years ago

I'm not color blind, but I see the same thing. Shading creates the effect of the boxes being different sizes even though they're not. Here's a screenshot:

https://twitter.com/thomashpark/status/238665017145303040/ph...

lloeki• 14 years ago

Reminds me of http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/28589961638/pixel-art-and-the-a...

outworlder2• 14 years ago

Aren't the "popping squares" related to subpixel ordering?

You could try on a different monitor.

buro94• 14 years ago

I have 2 computers here, both with very good monitors and both displaying the same effect:

1 x NEC MultiSync PA271W monitor

1 x Thinkpad X220 with IPS panel

Perhaps it is a result of the IPS panels in both? The NEC is a high-end monitor though and even with a cheaper IPS panel in the laptop I wouldn't expect to see any flaw that is the result of the monitor in the NEC.

jcoder• 14 years ago

Wow, microsoft.com looks like shit on iOS with a Retina display. Couldn't be bothered?

Akhena• 14 years ago

It seems it is NOT the first logo change since 1987. Some previous logos are displayed here : http://facts.swebee.com/microsoft-logo.html

Tichy• 14 years ago

Are those the Google colors?

notatoad4• 14 years ago

They're the windows colours. http://thegadgetsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/windows-...

despart• 14 years ago

The logo from the 70's is so disco.

zubr1768• 14 years ago

"The new logo, which incorporates a multicolored Windows symbol in addition to the "Microsoft" name in straightforward, lighter type, is intended to "signal the heritage but also signal the future — a newness and freshness," said Jeff Hansen, Microsoft's general manager of brand strategy."

Freshness? The most underwhelming design "innovation" yet... Playing it safe, boring, square as ever.

loceng• 14 years ago

The colours remind me just a little bit of Google..

trhtrsh2• 14 years ago

Because Google uses the same primary colors that MS Windows used.

pmelendez• 14 years ago

While the new logo is OK what I found intriguing is that for the first time Windows is associated with the corporate image. Isn't that betting the whole company on a single product?

Not that is not true since a decade ago but it might reduce the chances in the future to make a turn around. Apple did remove "Computer" from his name to make space to iOS devices and to me Microsoft is doing the opposite... let's see how it goes, at least they are working hard to refresh their selves and that's good for the industry.

AtTheLast• 14 years ago

It's nice to see Microsoft putting some effort into design. The logo doesn't take my breath away or anything, but I think it's an improvement on the old one.

jere• 14 years ago

>Ironically, Windows 8's new logo is now single-colored.

While I don't enjoy the perspective on the Windows 8 logo, I at least respect the single color. As usual, it doesn't seem like the right hand is talking to the left hand. I actually like the previous logo. It feels like it has some character and I'm not surprised it lasted 25 years. This new logo feels so damn generic, like a generic brand you would pick up at the grocery store...

* Compare to the active ingredients in Apple.

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tharris0101• 14 years ago

The four boxes don't bother me, but the segoe font is way too plain. I guess they use that font on everything, though.

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horacio• 14 years ago

Their choice to use their own Segoe typeface is what will make this a less-pleasing logo than it could have been.

Segoe looks good in its intended use for text on screen, and printed text at small and normal sizes, but Segoe does not look good at very large sizes.

When this logo appears on billboards, and in other large display settings, its weaknesses will become apparent.

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ThomPete2• 14 years ago

Many commenters here are predictably unable to look at this as the business decision it is.

What people don't seem to understand is that the price of a logo is not based on how it looks. Aesthetics have nothing to do with this. It's based on how much the ability to make sure that the entire system is implemented properly is worth to MS.

This is not a question about whether the logo "works for you".

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ricardobeat2• 14 years ago

It's a question of whether it works for everybody, and unless somente here wants to do free research, we can only extrapolate from our on perceptions.

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ThomPete2• 14 years ago

No it's not a question of whether it works for everybody. The world is filled with successful companies with ugly logos.

The purpose of the logo is not to look pretty but to identify.

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tankbot2• 14 years ago

Personally, I'm a big fan of their short-lived 1980-1981 logo. I realize it has no place among today's clean, "Metro" look, but I love Metal and this just speaks to me. :)

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MartinCron2• 14 years ago

It's not just metal. It's full of "tech" and "science" and "future" and "enthusiasm" and even "fun".

Re-adopting the 1980-1981 logo would send a signal that I would love to hear. That Microsoft is rebooting Microsoft and that things are going to be new and fun again.

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tankbot2• 14 years ago

I totally agree. Honestly MS really needs this sort of overhaul if they want to remain competitive down the road. They still have a pretty good hold on enterprise IT (slipping with the cloud) but I personally think they are in a bad position in just about every other market.

Though I've never had much love for Redmond despite using their products for 20+ years, since they feel like an underdog now I instinctively want to cheer for them. But, like someone said in another post, they sure make it difficult.

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KingOfB• 14 years ago

Interesting that 3 of the squares represent Windows, Office, XBox. I'm guessing the 4th square will represent Surface once it de-vaporizes?

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rhengles• 14 years ago

Condensates.

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draggnar• 14 years ago

I think MSFT is starting to get a little obsessed with the boxes - excuse me "tiles". I went to the store opening today in Boston, and I was pretty impressed. Very clean, bright, lots of screens.. made the Apple store across the street seem very conservative. We'll see if it ends up being a hit, but it is definitely standing alone as it's own unique store experience.

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ricardonunez• 14 years ago

The logotype would have been better alone. The symbol should have been the Windows 8 symbol. It makes me think that they used two teams and they didn't communicate during the process. Overall I like it, is refreshing.

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alphang• 14 years ago

They started using the new wordmark in June, in the Surface promo materials: http://photos.allthingsd.com/photos/i-vGmfLVB/0/M/i-vGmfLVB-...

I guess this is the official launch.

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septerr• 14 years ago

The Google+ button (right towards top) in this article about Microsoft's new logo is totally spoiling it for them.

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/08/23/microsoft-now-bra...

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SoftwareMaven2• 14 years ago

[The logo] is intended to "signal the heritage but also signal the future — a newness and freshness".

Does every marketing exec have to say that about their new logo? Must be the same effect as sports players saying "We just gave it 110%" when they win.

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narrator• 14 years ago

Anybody notice this is basically the AVG logo with the colors flipped around?

See: http://www.avg.com/us-en/homepage

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seanalltogether• 14 years ago

No, but now I see that the AVG logo has always been the windows icon, but with the colors flipped around.

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AndresOspina• 14 years ago

Good change!! the new logo is simple and direct the point.

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run4yourlives• 14 years ago

They should go back to that Metallica logo they had in 1980.

Nothing says corporate dominance like thrash metal font.

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mandeepj• 14 years ago

At the top left corner, I think the text "menu" should be replaced with "Start" and dropdown icon should be replaced with the icon found on windows start button (the MS logo)

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imd• 14 years ago

"is expected to unveil its new, more colorful logo"

Picture of logo already available in the article.

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CyberDroiD• 14 years ago

On the homepage at microsoft.com, they are using the same logo for Microsoft Store as the company name.

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runn1ng• 14 years ago

I still don't get why Microsoft is pushing Metro SO HARD to bet everything on it when nobody really likes it that much.

Zune (where I saw it for the first time) failed in the market. Windows Mobile (that has the Metro theme) failed in the market. Now I don't know XBox (at all) and its GUI, but its success happened long before Metro was created.

People don't seem to like it in the new Windows preview all that much, either.

Why the big bet on Metro?

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podperson3• 14 years ago

Similarly the Ribbon. The Ribbon was supposed to make Office easier to use. It was so incomprehensible (not to mention annoying and wasteful of screen real estate), Microsoft created a GAME to explain to users how to use the Ribbon. (How bad a UI fail is that?) Still no-one likes it, so they shoehorn it into more places.

I think Microsoft gets that Apple doesn't allow itself to be driven by focus groups, but instead they allow random insane people to drive them.

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baq• 14 years ago

i like the ribbon. it doesn't make access to anything harder - i couldn't find whatever i was looking for in pre-2007 office and i can't find anything now, but at least the icons are prettier. that's a net win for me.

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SCdF• 14 years ago

Well, to be completely fair MS Labs made it, not the office team, and there is no indication that they made it because it was so hard to use. If that was the case surely then Office would actually ship with Ribbon Hero, instead of having it as an unmaintained experiment you can download from their website if you happen to have heard of it?

IIRC, it was an experiment in gameification and Office and the ribbon was the thing that was new at the time, and it made sense to write it on top of teaching users the new UI.

While we're throwing around anecdotes on how incomprehensible ribbon is, I know plenty of people who are totally fine with it. I don't really use any MS products (and so never encounter it) and don't have an opinion on it, but I think phrases like "no-one likes it, so they shoehorn it into more places" are neither true nor even potentially valid (no one likes it so they use it more because... they're evil? They want you to hate them?)

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Dylan168073• 14 years ago

Microsoft created a GAME to explain to users how to use the Ribbon

Haha man what losers. That'd be like using solitaire and minesweeper to teach the mouse.

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corporalagumbo2• 14 years ago

no one liked the ribbon? data point here: i liked it. i think its very logically arranged and straightforward to use. i could never understand the frothing hate for it. because it has clear categories, and a nice visual layout of buttons and functions? because it doesnt have enough cluttered text menus?

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Permit• 14 years ago

>I still don't get why Microsoft is pushing Metro SO HARD to bet everything on it when nobody really likes it that much.

I personally love Metro, and I'm not the only one in my circle of friends. I accept that not everyone likes it, but I really prefer a text driven design like Metro.

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JGuo• 14 years ago

I prefer the windows 8 logo much more: http://www.fastcodesign.com/multisite_files/codesign/imageca...

The unsolicited redesign "slate" logo is cool too: http://www.minimallyminimal.com/2012/7/3/the-next-microsoft....

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nostromo• 14 years ago

Reminds me of Philip Morris' rebranding (http://taxtrials.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/altria_logo1...)

Problem is, I'm pretty sure "Altria" was trying to be generic and forgettable.

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drstewart• 14 years ago

It seems to be the common theme among all giant multinationals -- they're trying to soften their image by using pastel colors, rounded, clean fonts, minimalist shapes.

See also: BP, Walmart

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fratis• 14 years ago

As much as I just loathe saying "I told you so," I direct your attention to this prediction 55 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4174622

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bwhmather• 14 years ago

It seems odd that they chose to post the logo as a jpeg. The compression artifacts stop it from appearing as crisp as it should be.

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yew-right• 14 years ago

Does your TV need a "user-interface"?

Does your secretary need a touchscreen?

MS's last remaining market is business. As others bring to business the old power of UNIX, for less cost, and repackaged with now commonplace buzzwords like "opensource", "linux", and "cloud", MS is in big trouble. For most of the business world, software is an expense, not an asset. Inexpensive wins.

But those guys who could say "FU" in 1992, why should they care? MS has had a GREAT run.

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outworlder2• 14 years ago

Did they hire the same designer that created the game "Simon Says"? Even the colors are the same.

Image: http://www.digitalrendezvous.net/wordpress/wp-content/upload...

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progrock2• 14 years ago

You mean simply 'Simon.' The Chrome logo has been called into question about it's similarity in the past. Weirdly I now associate those primary colours with Google rather than M$.

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te_chris• 14 years ago

Bahahahaha, it's pretty much the old telecom New Zealand logo [1] . that makes me laugh. a lot

[1] http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/telecom_... - the one on the left.

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gradstudent• 14 years ago

Interesting. Is it just me or does their new logo seem to suggest that Microsoft has given up on trying to be anything other than Windows?

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molmalo• 14 years ago

Can someone explain me why do they have that strange blue windows logo at the bottom of the page?

http://i.microsoft.com/global/ImageStore/PublishingImages/lo... http://res1.windows.microsoft.com/resbox/en/Windows%207/main...

I mean, it's not the current Windows 8 logo, nor the Windows 7 logo. It's a merge of both worlds: Old logo with Win8 colors.

Are they planning to change it in the very last second? (I don't think so) Or do they want to make a slow transition between the old and the new Windows logo?

Or... probably, according to Occam's razor, someone just failed to put the right logo there.

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progrock2• 14 years ago

Italics in logos may well be offically out!

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mokeefe• 14 years ago

shuffling the deck chairs...

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digitailor• 14 years ago

Really not bad looking. Amazing what you can do with MSPaint these days.

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tsurantino• 14 years ago

I like how from 1980 to 1981 it was not Microsoft but really a front for Metallica to make it's big step in disrupting the corporate technology industry.

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campuscodi• 14 years ago

Actually quite impressed. Not because of the logo's quality, since it's not that a radical change, but because Microsoft finally got the guts to make a change.

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schukin• 14 years ago

This logo just screams "compromise".

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jasonkolb• 14 years ago

Is it just me or does the laptop in this (stock?) banner photo on their homepage look like a Macbook? (With the Apple logo photoshopped off.)

http://i.microsoft.com/global/ImageStore/PublishingImages/As...

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Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

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