I played with the thought of a comment on this back and forth. But after a little shitstorm on social media, which started because I posted my first opinion when I saw the new Google logo, I finally decided to share my thoughts with you.
The shitstorm wasn’t actually about my opinion. It was about the fact that I cared at all. So as a designer like the guys at Google I have to and every other designer should as well care about it. We could learn a lot from a rebranding at this scale. But all the people who posted comments to get honor from others and make me upset, were normal users. People who have nothing to do with design at all. The fact that they made fun of me caring about the new logo, and they only saw the logo — no one looked at the whole identity like I did — which I can tell by their comments, was the best reaction I could get to be sure that their rebranding is working probably!
»Good typography is noticed as little as clean air to breathe. Poor one only get noticed when it stinks.« — Kurt Weidemann
I love this quote from the famous german typographer Kurt Weidemann. Because no one perceived the new logo as much irritating that they thought it is worth a thought, this quote was the first thing that came into my mind after reading the first few comments. So when people find the fact of me caring about a thing they think it isn’t worth a thought about more worth than the new identity — it works. Because good design should be like clean air to breathe, not noticed and no thought worth.
In fact I keep it short. I will not make any judgements about details of the rebranding. This is because I’m not in a positions nor do I have access to the information you should have, to make such judgments. In my eyes too many people have done this job, too many times last week. So I will only thank all the people on Facebook who took part in this little shitstorm last week. Nothing could have made me clearer about my decision that google did have made a good job!
Have you made similar experiences? Do you share my thoughts?
First published by me on medium.com.