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Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

seattletimes.nwsource.com

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Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#191

Post by hk_kh »

quarterto wrote: post #2

I... don't hate it. What's wrong with me? It's bold, it's fresh, it does a pretty damn good job of shrugging off the Microsoft of the past 25 years.

How is the top menu[1] ok? Grey background with clear blue icons? I would understand with skype because it's not their logo, but even their own blue icons look terrible with that background.

Also, the controls on the carousel[2] are off.

This is not just fanboy hate, but for a company the size of Microsoft, their homepage should matter. These two examples show that they just don't care.

Unrelated to this, I find the metro style interesting for touch devices, but adopting it as the look of the whole company dumbs down their entire product. Also, the font looks to me like a futurist Comic Sans.

[1]: http://i.imgur.com/a9JzT.png

[2]: http://i.imgur.com/rnjJM.png

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#192

Post by podperson »

baq wrote: post #176
podperson wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly the Ribbon. The Ribbon was supposed to make Office easier to use. It was so incomprehensible (not to mention annoying and wasteful of screen real estate), Microsoft created a GAME to explain to users how to use the Ribbon. (How bad a UI fail is that?) Still no-one likes it, so they shoehorn it into more places. I think Microsoft gets that Apple doesn't allow itself to be driven by focus groups, but instead…

i like the ribbon. it doesn't make access to anything harder - i couldn't find whatever i was looking for in pre-2007 office and i can't find anything now, but at least the icons are prettier. that's a net win for me.

If it didn't waste so much (precious) vertical real estate I would be inclined to agree.

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#193

Post by mbesto »

notatoad wrote: post #185
notatoad wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How many people here think Google should change it's logo? The logo itself lacks any sort of design principles and very clearly was created by a techie with lack of graphic design. So why on earth hasn't Google changed it? They have changed it. They subtly update it every couple years to keep the shading and the bevel in line with current trends. In any case, you're either missing my point, or you're missing the poi…

and your link to the top 10 brands only shows coke for me, but here's what i'm thinking of: golden arches, chevy bow tie, nike swoosh, apple logo, playboy bunny, wikipedia crossed W.

Apparently you didn't scroll through.

1. Coke (name only, stylized)

2. Microsoft (name only, but recently changed)

3. IBM (name only, slightly stylized)

4. GE (name in a circle)

5. Intel (name with a swoosh)

6. Nokia (name only)

7. Toyota (no text regularly)

8. Disney (name, highly stylized)

9. McDonalds (normally has name in logo)

10. Mercedez-Benz (no text regularly)

So, Toyota and Mercedez-Benz I discounted.

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#194

Post by mbesto »

notatoad wrote: post #127
mbesto wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft isn't changing their brand, they're updating their brand. Semantics. > it's not a sign of the apocalypse. I'm sorry if I implied it's a sign of the apocalypse. I didn't mean it that way. The point is Microsoft has suffered greatly due to the massive success of Apple. This is no news to anyone. They're not going to die anytime soon, but they have a MASSIVE threat. The Wire's portrayal of the character's br…

>How many people here think Google should change it's logo? The logo itself lacks any sort of design principles and very clearly was created by a techie with lack of graphic design. So why on earth hasn't Google changed it? They have changed it. They subtly update it every couple years to keep the shading and the bevel in line with current trends. In any case, you're either missing my point, or you're missing the poi…

> They subtly update it every couple years to keep the shading and the bevel in line with current trends.

Apparently not. They changed it once in 1999 (after its original in 1998) and again in 2010.[1]

"The logo was the foundation for new icons and hundreds of tiny alterations designed to accommodate and seamlessly integrate the expanded functionality of the left-hand panel."[2]

So they had a legitimate design reason for changing the logo, not based solely on the brand...

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_logo

[2] - http://googleblog.blogspot.ro/2010/05/google-design-turned-u...

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#195

Post by pyre »

Prophasi wrote: post #70
pyre wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> made money by the truckload when other companies > could barely survive The other companies would probably have fared better of Microsoft wasn't dominating the market. This phrasing makes it sound like the market wasn't a zero-sum game.

The market wasn't then, and isn't now, zero-sum. Microsoft's domination was achieved by making passable-to-excellent browsers in the beginning and putting them on the desktop, which made the web more accessible to millions of people, boosted commerce, and pushed feature development forward much more quickly than Netscape (or any company) would have done absent competition. Bigger market, bigger pie, more investment,…

  > The market wasn't then, and isn't now, zero-sum.
How many desktop operating systems are normal people going to use? Operating systems don't tend to be complementary (people running multiple OSes and desktop VMs are the exception, not the rule... especially back in the 90s).

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#196

Post by SCdF »

podperson wrote: post #155
runn1ng wrote: post #153

I still don't get why Microsoft is pushing Metro SO HARD to bet everything on it when nobody really likes it that much. Zune (where I saw it for the first time) failed in the market. Windows Mobile (that has the Metro theme) failed in the market. Now I don't know XBox (at all) and its GUI, but its success happened long before Metro was created. People don't seem to like it in the new Windows preview all that much, ei…

Similarly the Ribbon. The Ribbon was supposed to make Office easier to use. It was so incomprehensible (not to mention annoying and wasteful of screen real estate), Microsoft created a GAME to explain to users how to use the Ribbon. (How bad a UI fail is that?) Still no-one likes it, so they shoehorn it into more places. I think Microsoft gets that Apple doesn't allow itself to be driven by focus groups, but instead…

Well, to be completely fair MS Labs made it, not the office team, and there is no indication that they made it because it was so hard to use. If that was the case surely then Office would actually ship with Ribbon Hero, instead of having it as an unmaintained experiment you can download from their website if you happen to have heard of it?

IIRC, it was an experiment in gameification and Office and the ribbon was the thing that was new at the time, and it made sense to write it on top of teaching users the new UI.

While we're throwing around anecdotes on how incomprehensible ribbon is, I know plenty of people who are totally fine with it. I don't really use any MS products (and so never encounter it) and don't have an opinion on it, but I think phrases like "no-one likes it, so they shoehorn it into more places" are neither true nor even potentially valid (no one likes it so they use it more because... they're evil? They want you to hate them?)

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#197

Post by MatthewPhillips »

bjornsteffanson wrote: post #86
brudgers wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web came to Microsoft after the IPO. At the time, there were a lot employees with "fuck you money" and the web was still the wild west not a corporate branding commodity. Thus Microsoft's approach has been generally hands off and the first priority has always been to get information out on the web. The idea of a monolithic website like Apple's or Google's just doesn't apply. It's not part of Microsoft's DNA. Comp…

I understand what mean about it not being part of Microsoft's DNA, but it seems like you're trying to blame Microsoft's poor web presence on its age. How do you then rationalize other pre-Web companies like IBM and Apple who have managed to successfully embrace it?

In what parallel universe has Apple embraced the web to a greater degree than Microsoft?

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#198

Post by saraid216 »

brudgers wrote: post #80
k3n wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consistently bad.

Depends on the relative values one places on form, content, and completeness. In HN terms, Microsoft's website[s] is[are] great as MVP's and improvements thereupon. On the other hand, in terms of Apple's ex cathedra philosophy, then perhaps, yes it[they] is[are] bad.

> yes it[they] is[are] bad

That was mind-breaking. My brain processed it as, "yes it they is er, what are aaaaah bad".

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#199

Post by DavidHogue »

podperson wrote: post #192
baq wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i like the ribbon. it doesn't make access to anything harder - i couldn't find whatever i was looking for in pre-2007 office and i can't find anything now, but at least the icons are prettier. that's a net win for me.

If it didn't waste so much (precious) vertical real estate I would be inclined to agree.

Double click on the tab at the top. It auto-hides the ribbon and you get most of your real estate back.

Re: Microsoft gets a new logo for the first time since 1987

#200

Post by simonw »

colanderman wrote: post #175
rhplus wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LCIDs in the URI remove ambiguity about which language to serve (do you use Accept-Language? Or IP sniffing? Or user prefs in cookies?), they remove ambiguity about which storefront to show for a market and - most importantly - they make alternate language/markets indexable by search engines because each has a distinct URI. Why are Apple, IBM, Amazon, Google doing it if it's such a terrible design? http://www.ibm.com…

Accept-Language is clearly the correct solution. It's easy to set in browsers (at least it is in Opera, if it's not in some other browser then I contend that's a UI bug), and OEMs should set it to a sane default for the region in which the browser is distributed. The indexability is an interesting argument, but my response is that there should be a standard mechanism to query, via HTTP OPTIONS, in which languages a r…

Unfortunately Accept-Language simply doesn't work - if you talk to engineers at Google they'll tell you that they've done the research and an enormous number of browsers have the incorrect setting and hence send an inappropriate header.
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