These days, it is customary to regularly access the Internet through a huge variety of devices – from the more traditional desktop and laptop computers, to smartphones, to tablets and phablets. Google has used this situation to justify replacing its logo for the first time in 16 years.
Today’s visitors to Google’s website can see a cute animation in which a hand rubs out the logo we have become familiar with loading up onto our device screens since 1999, before the new logo – which uses basically the same colors as the old one, but has a more playful-looking font – is drawn in.
In a post published today on Google’s official blog, the search corporation’s Tamar Yehoshua, Vice President of Product Management, and Bobby Nath, Director of User Experience, explain that the redesigned logo “shows you when the Google magic is working for you, even on the tiniest screens”. This and the revised branding, they elaborate, are now suitable for “a world of seamless computing across an endless number of devices and different kinds of inputs”.
Google has yet to fully roll out this new design across all of its products, but has pledged to do so soon. In the meantime, the company has posted the following nostalgic video demonstrating how the Google logo has gradually evolved since its inception in the 1990s.
