Logology
Those New G-Suite Logos Everyone Hates? They’re Actually a Smart Idea
A contrarian take on Google’s unpopular rebrand
Anytime a company alters an iconic logo — or one that’s merely familiar — it inevitably faces a cry of public backlash. It’s only human nature: People are inherently wary of change, and the default knee-jerk reaction to any logo change is skepticism or downright hostility. For recent examples, look no further than Airbnb’s Bélo symbol, which Gizmodo declared “the sexual Rorschach test for our time”; Uber’s “atom and bit” logo (since expired); and Spotify’s crooked frequency waves.
So Google was certainly treading lightly through its recent rebranding of the company’s G-Suite collection of productivity apps to Google Workspace, which overhauled the visual identities for each of the apps, including the venerable Gmail envelope icon (circa 2013) and Google Calendar, which made its debut even further back, in 2009.
Most of the initial pushback online centered on the fact that the updated logos now look nearly interchangeable — which, to be clear, in the company’s eyes was largely the point of the redesign. As it has routinely done in recent years with the logo marks for Google Maps, wireless provider Google Fi, and Google Fit, Google has stamped its signature…
