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Microsoft Unveils First New Company Logo In 25 Years
Barence writes "For the first time in 25 years, Microsoft has issued a new company logo to usher in the Windows 8 era. Made up of a newly square Windows symbol alongside grey Microsoft logo type, it's been designed to closely match the logos for other products in Microsoft's portfolio, including Office and Xbox. The logo takes pride of place on Microsoft.com from today, and will be used in Microsoft's retail stores and on all future TV ads."
there is no dollar sign in there.
Next best thing to putting Clippy in there, I guess.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm pretty sure I've already seen this exact logo out in front of their Microsoft Store at University Village for quite some time now (maybe a year?).
#DeleteChrome
This article shows a history of Microsoft's logos.
http://www.bestlookinglogos.com/2009/07/four-square-logo/
or they paid him $50 for it
It really does look like the image used on a Quatro can: http://www.canmuseum.com/Staging/Images/Cans/22681.jpg
#DeleteChrome
Probably had to eat with only one hand too.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I don't like the spacing between the f and t, aesthetically, but I like clean lines and simple designs so it works pretty well for me.
So is the average user going to think that the logo is the app for the game Simon? Artistic brilliance, aye! Should make that playable while computer boots...
Doesn't look to fancy. Simplicity can be very expensive.
*crickets*
To be expected. What I want to know is:
a) How much time did they spend on this?
b) How much money did they spend on it?
Anything north of 12 months and $50 mil, I'll be suitably disgusted and impressed. 24 months and $100 mil, they deserve some kind of fail award.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Interesting...a few weeks ago I recall seeing an article somewhere about supposedly leaked designs for new Microsoft devices -- I think it was a portable mouse and some other things, can't remember where I saw it. But one of the comments pointed out that it was probably fake, because the Microsoft logo on the devices didn't have their usual slant, didn't have the notch in the o.....it basically looked like this one. Perhaps they weren't fake after all?
Worse than the flag, that's an achievement.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Wow, oh wow! Whoa! A square rainbow! WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?!? T_T
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The ft ligature looks a bit like its standing out. Like they want their name to be stressed MicrosoFT and you get spit all over your screen.
When asked why, the answer is almost always: "It's 2014".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Apparently this is the "less is more" philosophy... but at the same time, it is plain and unimaginative. Isn't it bad for a company that aims to prove that they can reinvent themselves?
"It must have took around 5 minutes in paint to come up with that design..."
"I can't help but think of windows 3.11 for some reason."
"Does my monitor need calibrating again, or do those four colours in the panes look curiously sickly?"
"Intelligence has nothing to do with politics!"
-Londo Mollari
Not.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
And the jagged diagonal lines on "MICROSOFT" are so retro Win3.1. Flying toasters are out. Flying chairs are in.
Really? This looks like the last thing you drew before you thought, "I should try out the circle brush."
Four squares and some basic typeset.
I can't even imagine how much they actually paid for this with all the different designs submitted, numerous meetings going over designs, tweaks to it.
I can imagine the comments in the meeting though.
"Yeah Bob. What we're looking for is something that says simple and not over thought. Go back and try AGAIN."
My studio - www.graylands.ca
Seriously, this is the best they could do?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Looks very Metro. (Tha'ts not a compliment)
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
A new logo. That's gonna help a lot.
DaveyJJ
how long before /. updates their logo then?
Compare with the Polaroid logo.
This tiled-rectangle thing is getting completely out of hand. Even on phones it looks stupid.
I bet the designer got paid more for that logo than I make in a year.
return your logo to the 1980's...
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.
Oh boy! Instead of a flying window of its me too windowing environment, it's the me too of the giant smartphone tiny touchscreen square buttons paradigm transparently the future of the giant multimonitor desktop!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The designer must of taken a whole lunch break to create it.
Mayhaps but, you know it went something like..
Hey we need a new logo
Send out the RFP
Receive hundreds if not thousand of submissions, most of them decidedly silly
Spend hours upon days upon weeks of LSERs (Logo Submission Evaluation Reviews) to narrow the field
Toss that into the pot and go with an Execs 5yo did in crayon
Well imagine the irony if the new logo was created with a competitor's image manipulation tool? They eat their own dogfood, gotta give 'em that.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...and, much like vista, it is a huge disappointment
This is Microsoft you are talking about here.
This was designed by multiple committees each of which would only support their own design.
After 3 months of deliberations Balmer sat in on a committee meeting and determined the winner by lining up the different executives that ran each committee and then started throwing chairs at them. The last one standing won.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Given the latest developments, the font should've been MS Comic Sans.
there is no dollar sign in there.
Of course there isn't. The logotype part is "Microsoft", not "MS". The dollar sign, an homage to Microsoft's roots as a BASIC interpreter publisher, comes in only when you abbreviate it as M$.
The definition of "futuristic" has changed, to childish ultra-simplicity.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
have. It's "must HAVE". "of" makes no sense.
The best response of that nature that I've seen read something like "Do you of any idea how annoying that is?"
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
I'm totally upgrading to Metro now!
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
M$ has too much cash on hand to be sold off.
How much cash would Microsoft have to hemorrhage before having to spin out pieces of itself? Would Xbox be the first to go?
No, even their gays are boring and uncreative:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/84/Logcabinlogo.jpg
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That thing is so bad the f is molesting the t out of sheer despair.
Now that's something i would expect from FOSS lol not MS. Who will not let Apple out innovate them. Not a very good start ide say.
Jack of all trades,master of none
We have a video of the kickoff meeting with Microsoft and that designer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE5WQLMwHHk
It's one thing they want to emphasize a new design formula - they can create a Surface brand around that, and even standarize the Windows/Office logos to match this change... but to change one of the most known corporate logo in the industry? All just to reflect and match a visual layout that will necessarily be replaced in 3-6 years?
Am I really the only one here who prefers this over the old logo?
There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics - Umberto Eco
I figured the new logo would be a stylized graphic of Balmer bending a customer over a table and shoving an apple up the customers ass. Of course, I did poorly at marketing.
The apple goes in the mouth, Balmer is shoving something else up the customers ass.
Squeal!
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
So is the average user going to think that the logo is the app for the game Simon?
No, you're thinking of the first logo for Google Chrome.
I figured the new logo would be a stylized graphic of Balmer bending a customer over a table and shoving an apple up the customers ass. Of course, I did poorly at marketing.
The apple goes in the mouth, Balmer is shoving something else up the customers ass.
Squeal!
Presumably, a $500 office chair.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Well, it looks like a rectangular technicolor yawn to me.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Well imagine the irony if the new logo was created with a competitor's image manipulation tool? They eat their own dogfood
Not always. Sometimes Microsoft even uses audio editors distributed by the prohibited-copying group Radium for files included with Windows.
Yes, both Apple's Myriad and Microsoft's Segoe (rhymes with ego) are inspired by Frutiger.
As I said in a lengthy post above, this IS futuristic, and has nothing to do with the 80s. As you said yourself, various companies (including MS) were putting out much more detailed or extravagant logos in the 80s. It was only the cars back then that were plain and ugly and boxy, mainly due to economics I think. There's been a clear trend towards minimalism over the last 20 years; we've seen it in music, typefaces, and user interfaces recently. Music in the 70s and 80s was far more complex and detailed than what we have now. Remember in the 90s when everyone was going nuts downloading tons of fonts? Now everyone just uses Arial. This logo doesn't surprise me at all, it's a sign of the times.
The old MS logo (80-81) that looks like Metallica's old logo (the one they used in the 80s, not the minimalist one they have now), that looks "old". But it also looks good. But people these days don't like stuff like that; they like ultra-simple stuff.
It could look good enough in smartphones and maybe tablets, but have you tried to see that logo in a desktop?
May have taken a bit longer. He was required to use MS Paint.
This logo looks like it came out of a middle-school art contest in the 80's.
Do they even realize how hokey it is or have they just all drank the Metro kool-aid?
with an X on it. Looks like it was created in a 1985 copy of MacPaint.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Wow, oh wow! Whoa! A square rainbow! WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?!? T_T
The video linked in the Technet announcement is interesting:
blue: Windows
red: Office
green: XBOX
yellow: ???
Maybe Microsoft is planning a new product line ... (if yellow was Server or dev tools there would be no reason not to include it in the video)
This is not the rumoured cubistic Apple logo!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
It looks like a cubist version of the rainbow Apple logo.
Are you sure that's not something related to the GNU project?
I'm fine with Microsoft's new logo. It certainly looks much better than any of their previous logos. However, their new flat gray color scheme with 80's era upper case menu items is crap. It is painful to look at. I've been thinking a lot about why Microsoft moved to such crap color scheme and the only thing I can come up with is they are trying to distinguish themselves from Apple and maybe Google. Apple has a similar color scheme but the difference is they make tasteful use of shiny buttons, bevels and drop shadow. It seems like Microsoft didn't want to copy them so they decided to go with the exact opposite. Now, I'm definitely not an Apple fan boy but seriously, Apple's site looks 100x better than Microsoft's. In fact, I think Microsoft's new color scheme and branding strategy widened the gap. If I didn't know better, I'd say a decree came down from the top that the next branding/marketing strategy had to differentiate Microsoft from their competition. Microsoft definitely accomplished that... in the worst way possible.
We'll make great pets
Microsoft. We're the box you can think in.
MacPaint was only available in black and white in 1985 (and until the advent of the Macintosh II)
The window 7 logo was #65535 and then it cycled back to zero.
Indeed. While simplicity is okay, the logo speaks absolutely nothing.
Appropriately ugly.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
who even has such hokey stained-glass windows? why are the f & t engaged in intercourse? it reads MicrosoA...MicrosoAp? subliminal microsoFT Windows, FTW!
It's not new, it's from 1995. http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft039s-logo-is-not-new-it039s-from-1995
Is it just me, or are those basically the same primary colors as Google?
Proverbs 21:19
That logo looks rather bland. Might as well change the name of the company to Windows.
The video linked in the Technet announcement is interesting:
blue: Windows
red: Office
green: XBOX
yellow: ???
Maybe Microsoft is planning a new product line ... (if yellow was Server or dev tools there would be no reason not to include it in the video)
Hmm I would have thought ...
Blue - Windows (For BSOD) ... Okay stuck on this one.
Red - XBox (For RROD)
Yellow - ASP/.NET (Yellow screen of death)
Green -
Aaron
"Curiouser and Curiouser...." -Alice
I guess I'll now refer to them as M&S Block.
Why didn't Microsoft use Comic Sans for their new logo? After all, this typeface is most commonly associated with Windows, even by people who have no idea what fonts are.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Green is for Money
Related, here's the last 25 years of Windows logos and my take on the next 20 lol: http://firestream.net/images/posts/msnext20.jpg
firestream.net
new logo... epic fail
"powerful" my ass... the old one projects more of a corporate power image (especially the italicising and the "os" thing)
look at lockheed martin's logo... now THAT'S a logo (the italics is what makes it seem powerful)
there is no dollar sign in there.
If you watch the video introducing the logo, you'll note that three of the colors represent broad categories of Microsoft - Blue is Windows, Red is Office, and Green is XBox.
So what's the color remaining they didn't provide an explicit mapping for in the video?
Gold.
Well played, Microsoft.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just sayin'
H&R Block is even simpler: 1 green square ( http://www.hrblock.com/ ).
H&R could claim MS copied them 4 times and sue for 4x infringement.
Table-ized A.I.
MS always copies Apple.....poorly. MS stole the NeXT logo and removed a dimension.
Table-ized A.I.
For years, Microsoft has been stuck on making everything "Windows". "Word for Windows". "Windows Live Messenger". "Windows Phone". Their marketing department seems convinced that it's their strongest brand and needs to be spread to absolutely everything, no matter how irrelevant.
They clearly now have committed the whole company to it, building the Windows logo into the company logo.
Personally, I think it's tedious and repititive and of little value. But they clearly aren't going to let go now...
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
As you said yourself, various companies (including MS) were putting out much more detailed or extravagant logos in the 80s. It was only the cars back then that were plain and ugly and boxy, mainly due to economics I think.
Really? I think almost all contemporary cars are ugly now, except for some with genuinely retro styling (Dodge Challenger is nice) and some super cars.
I also think that, in general, cars have got visually less and less attractive over the decades since the 1930s.
Now they're designed around protecting jaywalkers above most other considerations.
Oh, and to get back on topic, I hate all this touch screen / tablet / (not) Metro / plain squares / no shading / bland logos / ribbon stuff Microsoft is doing! Yes the logo looks crap and Windows 8 looks so much like Windows 3.1!
Your ad here.
Really? I think almost all contemporary cars are ugly now, except for some with genuinely retro styling (Dodge Challenger is nice) and some super cars.
Maybe you're an older person. At nearly 40, I think today's cars are mostly pretty boring, not ugly, and they've gotten more boring. Except for Fords; those are mostly very ugly with those horrible chrome grilles. To me, cars were most attractive in the 1990s; they finally shed the horrible boxiness of the 80s, but they hadn't gotten so boring as they are now. There were lots of great Japanese sports cars in the 90s; then, those disappeared, and have only recently been making a comeback. Cars were ugliest in the 70s, when they were generally huge gas-guzzlers with horrible handling, though the Datsun 280ZX was a giant exception. I'll grant you that there were a lot of great-looking cars in the 30s and even 40s, but the 60s had a lot of nice cars too, except they were mostly made in Europe. There's still a few really nice-looking cars these days with a non-supercar price; the Hyundai Genesis (coupe) is quite attractive IMO, and Suburu/Scion have a new rear-drive sports coupe that's quite affordable.
But you're right about the Metro/plain squares/no shading/bland logos stuff. As I was saying before, this is all part of the new trends toward extreme minimalism.
Yes you are.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Damn, you set of the Shill Alarm... guess I'll have to go sort it out... *skulks to the control box*
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Nah, the heads of the committees realized it would end that way, got together with their four competing logos for a game of darts - last one hit wins. They started to put them on the bulletin board, with a colored sheet behind each, in the teams' colors. Once they got the colored sheets up, the committee heads said, "Wait a minute..." and here we are.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
It was only the cars back then that were plain and ugly and boxy, mainly due to economics I think.
No, it's just fashion. It costs the same to make a boxy car or a curvy car. These things tend to go in cycles and also get dictated by the technology available to design them - in the 70s cars were designed on paper and with clay models, now it's all CAD so more complex shapes are achievable. But once people get bored with a certain look, one of the big manufacturers will strike out in a new direction and everyone follows.
The two biggest design influences on cars in the late 1970s were Guigaro and Bertone. They came up with the sharp-edged "folded paper" look that prevailed in the 80s (it usually takes 3-4 years for a new design to come to market, or at least it did back then). It might seem hard to believe, but these boxy shapes seemed fresh and exciting at the time, just as big shoulder pads, ra-ra skirts and leggings seemed fresh and exciting once. It's just fashion.
Personally I like Italian-influenced european cars of the 1970s, far more than most models today, and far more than American-styled cars of the 1970s (with a few exceptions). What appeals depends on your local culture as much as anything, but it's still all fashion.
There's one other factor I believe: headlights. Prior to around 1990, in the USA (but not Europe, because they're much more advanced) there was a stupid DOT requirement that all cars had to use "sealed beam" headlights. This greatly constrained the styling on the front ends of cars at the time. Remember back in the 80s, most of the cars had those ugly rectangular sealed-beam headlights. Some cars went to lengths to try to get around this; this is where the pop-up headlight craze came from, the idea being that at least during the daytime your car could look sleek and attractive, and it'd only look ridiculous at night. Somewhere around 1990, they changed the requirement to be like Europe's, where you just had to use a standard halogen bulb that was easily replaced, so manufacturers switch very, very quickly to the new plastic headlight housings (with interior lenses or reflectors) that are still used today; with these, they had an enormous amount of flexibility in how they could style the front end of the car while not having to resort to pop-up headlights. One holdout was the Corvette, which has had pop-ups (or something like it) since the 60s, and finally switched to fixed headlights with the C6 model in the early 2000s, but most other cars (including high-end ones) switched to fixed plastic-housing headlights back in the 90s.
I'm not too cunning of a linguist but I think what happened there (in American English at least) is that "have" when spoken has morphed to sound more like "huv" which is then erroneously rendered in text as "of" by the semi-literate.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
If they're so adamant that their tiles aren't the worst UI decision in human history, might as well get married to it, lol.
Wandering well off-topic now, but ne'mind....
You're right, local regulations will have an effect on design. I'm assuming you're in the US and looking at things from a US-based perspective. As such it might not be so obvious to you how design influences cross the Atlantic (very much in both directions).
Pop-up headlights originated in the 1960s on Italian sports cars because they improved aerodynamics, or least that's the perception - a smooth body looks faster. Later, by having pop-up headlights, your design acquired a sporty look by association whether it was actually sporty or not. So another fashion was born. I'm not quite sure whether this was really driven by the need to get around sealed-beam regulations, after all, pop-up lights were everywhere even where sealed-beam units were not mandated. The ugly rectangular headlights were not just in the US in the 1980s, look at the ultra-boxy Citroen BX which as far as I know never made it to the US.
Glass covers were another fashion, which reached a high point on the Ferrari 365 "Daytona". The design was largely copied by the Rover SD-1 but where that model was exported to the USA the glass covers were not allowed so it ended up with some rather ugly-looking dual headlamp units instead. For the same reason the strongly US-influenced GM/Vauxhall Firenza HPF could not be exported to the USA, though an export model was prepared. I assume that the "glass cover" rule came in in about 1975 because otherwise both of these designs from slightly earlier would have probably been a bit different. For example, the later GM/Pontiac Transam had a very similar nose design to the HPF but did not have glass covers.
I believe the real influence on headlights for today's cars is the improvements in aerodynamic design and also moulding/design technology that allows complex shapes to be made, but if regulations didn't allow separate bulbs that would make life difficult for the manufacturers. I expect they lobbied for the rule change which was hampering design.
I think you have a valid point. Aside from Windows and Office, I think the only MS product without Windows incorporated into it and succeed is Xbox.
There are some very successful con-men selling crappy logos to companies.
Yellow is for the frosty piss you would rather drink than use Microsoft products.
sadly it may have taken many days and many dollars to produce a logo that will look OK on the default low res startup graphic that was greeting me with Win95, but this is 2012 and I just can't believe that that is the best that could be done, so very lame, which matches Win 8.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Check out the logo for AVG antivirus. Even though they aren't exactly identical, they are so close that I predict a trademark lawsuit. I don't know if AVG would actually *win*, but I bet they try.
Nah, they will never get rid of Ballmer. He gave us one of the top 100 internet memes of all times! :: )
Join me in a round of Developers!
Classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE
AudioSurf: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3m8e0Un_Jc
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I happen to know that a Federal Government Agency in the early 2000s paid $75 grand for a sucky logo. It looked like a kid with a Mac "designed it", in two colors and about 10 minutes. That agency has an art department that I'm sure could have done a better job. It has since been replaced. No telling what a company like Microsoft paid for theirs.
This guy did a personal MS re-branding exercise a few months ago. His combination of rhomboids looks much more modern and appealing to me.
http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2012/7/3/the-next-microsoft.html
The new 4 colored squares in a square doesn't do it for me.
The new logo looks ugly and oldfashioned. Just like Windows Phone or Windows 8.
I know the article has been posted for awhile, but this just hit me. It's an epiphany.
This is a downgraded logo. It's the logo of a once puissant company that is on the decline. It's an admission that "we're still going to be around, but in a reduced capacity". It's Microsoft marketing... giving up.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The small version of the logo (for example in the upper left corner of their home page) appears significantly misaligned. The red box will appear to be 2/3 of a pixel to the left of the blue box on most LCD panels due to the structure of the RGB elements in each pixel. The strong vertical lines and narrow gaps in the logo, along with the vertically aligned primary colors, makes this a really glaring problem. How embarassing for Microsoft, inventors of ClearType some 15 years ago, who should have known all about this issue.
It took me about 10 seconds to notice this and another 10 seconds to figure out why. Microsoft spent how long and how much money coming up with this logo?