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The Next Microsoft

minimallyminimal.com

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Re: The Next Microsoft

#91

This is great. It will never work. A brand has to reflect the culture of how a product is made, sold, experienced, etc... Microsoft is not about simplicity, it's about feature creep. Microsoft sells software and licenses to big companies. Big companies don't want simple, they want value for their money - features! A better brand promise would be Microsoft - It Does Everything! Look at Windows 8. Is it going metro onl…

This is a branding exercise not a GUI implementation.

There has never been any connection between the actual products and MS branding. In fact for most brands those two are only connected via post rationalisation.

Of course it can work.

Re: The Next Microsoft

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is big enough that a shape that simple could easily become their logo. What company is this: http://www.owenjonesdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/1_... or this: http://www.wearesuntravel.com/SquareLogo_Jewel.303162624_std... or this: http://www.vintagevideogamer.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/...

What's the second one? Edit: never mind. Its Square Up. Found it on the second page of a Google Image Search.

Right. I found it. Probably not the best example of a ubiquitous company with an instantly recognizable logo, unless it was just a joke.

Re: The Next Microsoft

#94
Wow, excellent work!

The only thing I would change is the black and white space photography. While it's very cool, the grayscale lunar landscape photography doesn't quite convey the feeling of future to me... it feels a bit too bleak and desolate to me and maybe even depressing. I would consider adding a splash of color somehow (they are the designer, not me!). It would take a little of the edge off of something that is mass-consumer-oriented, in my opinion.

But regardless, the concept and the work is fantastic!

Re: The Next Microsoft

#95
We could debate whether this would "work" on a practical level as if this was a Powerpoint presentation for Steve Ballmer and we're supposed to predict how he'd react. But I'm really just finding myself appreciating the "space/science fiction" metaphor for technology.

Steve Jobs has often quoted Apple as "advancing the human race." I feel like this takes it to the next level. I felt myself wanting this company to exist just on pure principle. Whenever I read older science fiction, occasionally I'll recognize the story is supposedly set somewhere between 2000-2100 A.D., and yet we wear spandex and zoom around with FTL travel and fight aliens with lasers and make food with replicators, etc. And I'll smirk and think, "heh, he was way off," but beneath that cynicism, there's just a bit of regret that we just didn't actually evolve in that way. And I guess this is why the branding here resonated with me so much -- it touched that part of me and convinced me that this company could make all that reality after all.

As an engineer I feel like I have a hyper-literal mindset where most branding and advertising just washes over me. I live in a world where it matters what things "do," not how they "feel," so some guys playing volleyball with girls in bikinis while drinking Coors Light just washes over me as a bizarre way to stay hydrated while at the beach. But as I said earlier, I wanted this company to exist. I wanted to feel the things that this branding made me feel. I wanted to strap myself into this spaceship that this company was building and fly wherever it would take me. Practically speaking, that company probably won't be the one we all know as the bloated monopolistic entity that makes most of its profits from boring office productivity software.

But this made me wish it was.

Re: The Next Microsoft

#96
post #11

This is great. It will never work. A brand has to reflect the culture of how a product is made, sold, experienced, etc... Microsoft is not about simplicity, it's about feature creep. Microsoft sells software and licenses to big companies. Big companies don't want simple, they want value for their money - features! A better brand promise would be Microsoft - It Does Everything! Look at Windows 8. Is it going metro onl…

Could have easily made the same criticism of Apple in the mid 90s. Microsoft can definitely be saved. You just have to fire Ballmer and put a visionary in charge. There are still some really good people working at Microsoft. Unfortunately, the leadership and vision haven't been there. Nobody has been willing to take risks. They took a risk in killing the OEMs and building Surface in house. They now need to take a big…

Apple mid-90s might have been _trying_ to do everything, but they weren't getting there. Yes, they had a lot of products, but they were mediocre and lacked the installed base and mindshare of Windows. It is easier to focus when you aren't walking away from successful markets or customer expectations.

Microsoft nowadays Does Everything because it is evolved from a corporate strategy of dominating the OS space by providing users The Way to realizing the potential of computing technology. They wanted to provide CIOs and developers with the basic foundation, so they had to offer tools for all sorts of stuff.

Its future position is eroded as browsers "embrace and extend" to swallow up much of the daily activity on the desktop, leaving those users free to look at devices on dimensions other than satisfying an OS utility requirement, and as the iPad carves out a consumption-dedicated computing space.

Surviving into that space will be a very different challenge than Apple had. They have to move from successful businesses into new computing usage paradigms. Those involve a kind of user-experience focus that Microsoft hasn't previously needed, and couldn't match with its strategic utility role in the first place. It will take a very different vision and focus than what brought them here.

I agree that slapping a new logo on the current structure won't do much. But if that new branding is aspirational, its most important audience might be Microsoft's own employees, telling them that their past successes don't matter so much and that they have to get into a different frame. And quickly.

Re: The Next Microsoft

#97
Awesome designs. Microsoft rebranding experiment outshines their own branding but that work pales in comparison to your other works. I wanted to keep looking at your other designs. They simply please.

Have you pitched to Coca Cola and Microsoft? And why isn't someone already making the divine Powder watches or the Pal? I haven't had the chance to read through the text and comments on those pages. Maybe they are already in production which they should be~

Re: The Next Microsoft

#98
post #15

I'm no designer, but aren't logos supposed to be recognizable? This is a geometric shape, why not just use a square for the logo, or a triangle? Would people really associate this shape (which isn't particularly unique and probably not even trademark-able) with microsoft when they see it? I have my doubts Also unrelatedly, the missing i-dot is really throwing me off (probably just because I am used to it)

Microsoft is big enough that a shape that simple could easily become their logo. What company is this: http://www.owenjonesdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/1_... or this: http://www.wearesuntravel.com/SquareLogo_Jewel.303162624_std... or this: http://www.vintagevideogamer.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/...

I'm not saying you're wrong, but none of those logos is nearly as simple as this one. For example, I wasn't taught a formula for calculating their area in elementary school.

Are there any successful logos that really are this simple?

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