Remember, you’re never going to see them super big like in the image at the top. They all have all the colors, which just right off the bat makes it harder to tell them apart at a glance.

First is that they don’t really have colors. There are two problems with the colors of the new icons.

More importantly, they’re solid - except for a few that were better for their colors, like Maps, before its icon got assassinated. Likewise Keep (remember Keep?) and a handful of other lesser actors. The teal of Meet probably should have just stayed green, like its predecessor Hangouts, but it’s at least somewhat distinct. Gmail’s red color goes back a decade and more, and Calendar’s blue is pretty old as well. That’s part of why the icons of the most popular Google apps are so easily distinguished. Since I and a hundred million other people will have to stare at these ugly new icons all day until they retire them, maybe making a little noise will accelerate that timeline a bit. Better not to get attached.īut sometimes they do something so senseless that it is incumbent upon anyone who cares at all to throw the company’s justification in its face and tell them they blew it The last time I cared enough was with Google Reader. To paraphrase Sun Tzu, if you wait long enough by the river, the bodies of your favorite Google products will float by. We’ve seen so many Google icon languages over the years that it’s hard to bring oneself to care about new ones. That can be important, especially with a company like Google, which abandons apps, services, design languages, and other things like ballast out of a sinking hot air balloon (a remarkably apt comparison, in fact). Companies always talk loud and long about their design language and choices, so as an antidote I thought I’d just explain why these new ones are bad and probably won’t last.įirst I should say that I understand Google’s intent here, to unify the visual language of the various apps in its suite. Google really whiffed with the new logos for its “reimagination” of G Suite as Google Workspace, replacing icons that are familiar, recognizable, and in Gmail’s case iconic if you will, with little rainbow blobs that everyone will now struggle to tell apart in their tabs.

Google drive logo png