Before I begin this post, I should define what a "favicon" is. Wikipedia tells us that favicon is short for “Favorites icon” meaning that the original purpose of this icon is to represent the site in the Favorites of your browser. The new google favicon is displayed below.
It goes without saying that this icon looks nothing like Google's logo or brand identity. Not only is the "g" a different hue than the actual Google Logo, but it is set on somewhat gray background, and is it just me or does that look a little pixelated?
The audacity of the favicon design led 4 designers, from TurboMilk.com, to take a shot at redesigning the icon themselves. Behold the results below:
Denis Kortunov thought the favicon should be some kind of classy and simple symbol. "I will base it on the capital ‘G’ and I cannot really escape using the corporate colors: two at minimum but better all four. I will not use the font – I do not really like it and in the small icon size it will be hardly recognizable.
Yegor Gilyov wanted to design a more abstract symbol. "A sphere may be a metaphor for the Globe or a ball. It seems to entice you: “come play with me” which suits the Google’s image as a young and joyful company which oftentimes defies the generally accepted corporate rules."
Valera Namazov considered, Google's "mix of various technologies and services, and that the name Google comes from googol — the decimal number represented by one followed by 100 zeroes. Clearly, we have no other way but to create a round favicon with a hole."
Finally, Dmitry Joukov wanted to emphasis the search engine aspect of Google; specifically the ooooos. Joukov simple cut and pasted the double O's from the logo into the favicon.
I believe all of these are an improvement over the pixelated lowercase g, however I don't think any of them really nailed it. How about just using the uppercase G? Thoughts? ••••
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Goggle Favicon Debate
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3 comments:
Great post. I noticed this a week or two ago because my Picassa album icon changed, it was so nice! It had the google colors and was a round shape. Now it's a g. Not as pretty and it gets lots in my list of links...what were they thinking?
More on this, check out this helpful website: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/05/new-google-favicon.html with lots pictures of what Google chose from as well as their explanation on the design.
Also go here to submit your own idea:
http://www.google.com/faviconideas/ but the last day to do it is the 20th.
ya, their new favicon's been bothering me for weeks (except i didn't know what it was called, and so cursed in very general terms). it wastes valuable time when switching between tabs, because honestly- WHAT THE F*CK IS THIS LOWERCASE g DOING IN MY BROWSER?! then i remember it's the google street view tab of me looking at your house. yes, you.
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