New Google Favicon Deja Vu All Over Again?

theodp writes "Last June, Google rolled out a new favicon, the small branding icon that graces your URL bar when you visit Google. Which, as it turned out, bore a striking similarity to Garth Brooks' Circle-G logo. Well, Google went back to the drawing board and has come back with a new favicon, which it says was inspired by — not copied from, mind you — its users' submitted ideas. Some are also seeing inspiration elsewhere for the new favicon, which consists of white 'g' on a background of four color swatches. Take the AVG antivirus icon, for instance. Or everybody's favorite memory toy, Simon. Or — in perhaps the unkindest cut of all — the four-color Microsoft Windows logo, shown here with a superimposed white '7'. Anything else come to mind?" What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.

Comments

Really, timothy?

[eln]

What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.

You mean like the Slashdot editors who think it's important enough to put on the front page?

Re:Really, timothy?

[lysergic.acid]

why does it surprise you? have you never been to google.com or seen the official Google logo?

from the very start Google's used clashing primary colors with a homely serif font for their official logo. at first i thought it looked tacky & unprofessional (and it was), but over time it's grown on me. it's kinda refreshing to have a major IT company whose site doesn't have the stereotypical cold/sterile corporate look. sure, Google's logo comes off as very candid and a little bit childish, but it also elicits a warm & cheerful feelings.

something that's very sleek & glossy or highly-stylized just wouldn't fit with Google's familiar spartan (and slightly offbeat) image. i mean, if you look at Google's web services like Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, etc., they all have fairly plain and simple layouts. their designs are functional and modest. this is in stark contrast with the flashy, and often cluttered, web pages of companies like Yahoo!, Microsoft, and the popular early search portals.

it's a little ironic as Google is primarily an advertising company, but they don't have that 'multi-million-dollar marketing budget' look. this probably contributes to their popularity as Google's web services aren't as intimidating to non-geeks and computer novices who may be turned off by the slick interfaces and flashy layouts other sites strive for.

I'm not really seeing the similarity

[Trepidity]

The Garth Brooks one is particularly ridiculous---the only similarity appears to be that both have, at various times, used a lowercase 'g' in an entirely unremarkable font as a logo. Yes, congratulations, two instances of a lowercase 'g' can look similar!

The rest aren't much more convincing. Google uses some simple arrangements of primary colors, and, amazingly enough, so do some other companies, even some other tech companies. But they don't even look particularly similar (especially the Windows one).

Re:I'm not really seeing the similarity

[dotancohen]

Google uses some simple arrangements of primary colors, and, amazingly enough, so do some other companies, even some other tech companies. But they don't even look particularly similar (especially the Windows one).

Not to you, slashdotter, who sees these logos all the time. To the casually stroller-by, who sees tech logos once per fortnight, they will easily be confused. What is red, green, and blue and deals with computers? If today it is AVG / Google / MS and tomorrow it is something else then there _will_ be confusion and brand dilution.

Re:I'm not really seeing the similarity

[JustinOpinion]

Indeed. When you get down to minimalist, iconic designs, at favicon resolution, there is only so much parameter space. One of those links claims:

AVG favicon + 90 degree turn + Old favicon + Some smudging -> New favicon

Give me a break! Newsflash: any icon can be conceptually transformed into any other icon in a finite number of image-manipulation steps. Like: "Slashdot favicon + Convert to B&W + Duplicate the slash 3 times + flip two of the slashes -> Wikipedia's favicon" ... OMG! Wikipedia is stealing ideas from Slashdot!

The summary is so patently ridiculous that I really have to wonder if it was submitted as a joke or is an attempt to troll Slashdot. Google's new favicon has a "g" and 4 primary colors. It bears some resemblance to other 4-primary-color emblems (of which there are thousands). Get over it.

Re:I'm not really seeing the similarity

[ceoyoyo]

A lowercase 'g' in two entirely different, unremarkable fonts.

Re:I'm not really seeing the similarity

[countvlad]

Not to you, slashdotter, who sees these logos all the time. To the casually stroller-by, who sees tech logos once per fortnight, they will easily be confused. What is red, green, and blue and deals with computers? If today it is AVG / Google / MS and tomorrow it is something else then there _will_ be confusion and brand dilution.

The letter g might be confused with the letter g? Say it aint so!

Re:I'm not really seeing the similarity

[Pinckney]

It doesn't matter if they look similar. Favicons are tiny, and nobody is going to use them to identify a product. If there were potential for confusion, think of the chaos we would see, with thousands of sites not using favicons!

Re:I'm not really seeing the similarity

[nine-times]

Yes, I agree that this whole thing seems a little nit-picky. It's pretty hard to design a good logo. Ask a designer, and many will say that they find it to be one of the hardest things to design, since they should usually be extremely simple designs, immediately identifiable, and wrap up a lot of meaning into a single impression.

It's even harder to create an logo that doesn't resemble any other logo. You can't really do it. Art in general takes from prior works, even if only stylistically, and nothing is entirely original. People are usually inspired by something, or draw an idea from someone else's work. Besides that, like I said, logos should usually be pretty simple, and if you make a million designs, all of them extremely simple, then every design will resemble at least a couple of the others.

Knowing all that, consider the form of the favicon. They're 16px by 16px, and IIRC some browsers only support 8-bit graphics (256 colors, no alpha channel). That's going to narrow your options a bit.

Also, using multiple primary colors are popular in logos. They stand out, and can be used to convey a childish simplicity (fun) or an elemental nature of the product. Using a single letter or only a couple letters is popular in logos-- I don't think I need to explain why. When you put this all together, it would be amazing if lots of favicons didn't resemble each other in various ways.

Just WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just a great example of Slashdot Fanboi Masturbation. I mean, GOOD GRIEF! Top story! New Google Fav Icon! Stop the fucking presses!

Fishing for emotional validation.

[Spazntwich]

What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.

Maybe editors are so hard up for pageviews that they'll post whatever inconsequential slop comes to mind, and internet users are just so hard up for interesting news that they'll comment on whatever garbage the editors feed them.

If the tech sites puked out story after story about motherfucking lolcats apparently Timothy would take the comments to indicate mass obsession with them, which, shit... bad example.

But seriously, who is actually obsessed with Google's favicon and who is just bored?

Apple

[michaelmalak]

How many different ways can one make a trashcan icon?

Looks Like a Paw. Brings to mind Pet Supplies.

[Ron Bennett]

Looks like a blotch of random colors. I had no idea there was a lowercase "g" in it until I read the article here.

IMHO, the old favicon was much better - knew right away what it was. A bunch of random colors brings to mind websites about photoshopping, psychology (think blotch tests), or even a pet supply site, since it looks kinda like a paw print.

Ron

I can't stand it

[yakumo.unr]

I can't stand it, the g that is entirely reprasentative of the company doesn't stand out anywhere near clearly enough, the entire thing is just a blob and it makes tracking Google tabs in firefox a nightmare.

The user submitted favicons FTFA by by Hadi Onur Demirsoy, Lucian E. Marin and Yusuf Sevgen are all considerably better.

Impairing usability

[jspenguin1]

The purpose of a website's icon -- or any icon, for that matter -- is to provide a visual way to quickly find something in a list. Sometimes, the icon represents some abstract concept; in most applications, the "save" icon is a floppy disk, even though they're nearly obsolete. However, if the icon is unique, experienced users have no trouble connecting it with what it represents. I use icons exclusively for my bookmarks toolbar.

Of course, this only works when the icons don't change. Google has recently changed their icon again, just as I was getting used to the second one. Call me old-fashioned, but I happen to like the original Google icon.

I can understand changing the logo on the front page for special holidays (which seems like just about every day now), but icons shouldn't be changed just for the hell of it.

(C&P from my blog)

Bring back old logo

[Em Ellel]

The original (the old old) logo was way better.

Amen to that. I thought I was the only one that thought the original blue G on white background was great. It was simple, clean and unmistakable. Now it is getting worse and worse with each iteration.

-Em

UGLY

[quixote9]

It wasn't broke, but somebody in Marketing just had to fix it.