The Gopher took a nice cozy corporate job and is sitting now in a cubicle. He wears a suit and a tie instead of Hawaiian shirt. It's a serious business now.
Go's New Brand
251–260 of 301 posts
Re: Go's New Brand
#252Caveat: I'm a software developer who's worked in agencies for half of my 20 year career. A few thoughts: 1. Branding is hard: everybody things they can do it. Creative direction and art direction are really, really hard. If you haven't seen the "Make my logo bigger cream" video, go watch it, and then have some grace with the Go team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgcX0y1Nzhs 2. A brand is WAY more than a logo. I ge…
I'm a rare breed of designer + developer with 20 years of experience and I've been involved in branding projects with marketing agencies too. I agree, branding is hard, pleasing humans is hard.
In the case of Go I think both the branding and the logo are a mistake, objectively speaking.
I get that in the briefing they conveyed to the designers the idea that Go is a fun programming language, but both the client and the designers completely ignored the target audience. Developers, specially Go developers, care about reliability, performance, convenience, stability, etc. None of these characteristics is expressed in the brand other than "fun" above anything else.
Subjectively speaking I have a strong reaction against the brand. I'd rather have the old ugly gopher than this which I can't identify or empathize with in any way.
Re: Go's New Brand
#253This makes me incredibly (to me) sad. The identity is so completely soulless, and the logo is the opposite of timeless, trying to grasp currently oh so hip and pop retro aesthetic. Nevermind that the retro logo and super sleek modern visual identity seems to clash with each other, both are abandoning the playfulness that was so prevalent before, most clearly evident in the various Go gopher illustrations. And its not…
Relevant: golang-nuts mailing list discussion from 2011 where someone claimed the logo lacked "professionalism" and was thoroughly mocked for it (including by a younger, more juvenile yours truly).
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-nuts/JZ-gUROf...
Re: Go's New Brand
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
I totally agree. I only started playing with Go a few months ago and remember how amateurish the website and the mascot made it look. It gave the impression that it was a work in progress and research project instead of something that's been around for 8 years and used professionally.
> I only started playing with Go a few months ago and remember how amateurish the website and the mascot made it look. If good, clean text which displays in any browser is amateurish … then I prefer amateurism to professionalism. I really appreciate that the Go website (appears to be) good, clean HTML.
> I really appreciate that the Go website (appears to be) good, clean HTML.
Not for long if the design company has their way. Just look at their site: http://within.us/
Re: Go's New Brand
#255Perhaps this won't be a popular sentiment, but since when did programming languages need brand identity?
One of the reasons I really like Python is it never had any of this crap. It's popular just because it's useful and people like it.
Logos are not the only signs of a brand. Already the fact that there is the word "pythonic" signifies a strong branding.
Re: Go's New Brand
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ... that stupid gopher and the way it was everywhere was a serious put off for me on giving Go a look. Nerdy AF. Go is a programming language whose dominant demographic is nerds. > ... can you imagine for a second that gopher on anything Apple? Apple is a consumer oriented tech firm whose niche is high end goods. > Reading the comments here makes it clear why most programmers should stay away from design. You don't…
apple likes their own nerdy mascots. Note the devil horns are a shout out to the freebsd demon. People don't bitch about the python! http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/bs-d...
And don't forget Clarus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogcow
Re: Go's New Brand
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
The logo is awful. - it ham-fistedly plays on the name Go (look, the logo is "going"...) - it is not opinionated (it conforms seamlessly to contemporary corporate logo design, it looks like stock art) - it does not repay sustained attention Go is a brutalist language. Clean lines, no frills, lots of power, close enough to the metal. I want monotype, exposed beams and concrete, RTFM, no ugly movement lines. I would ac…
The logo also appears to have lifted several elements from the podcast Jordan, Jesse, Go [1]. The font is almost identical. It has the white text on almost the exact same shade of blue. It has the three lines trailing part of the logo. EDIT: Here [2] are the two logos side by side. The number of similarities would make this one hell of a coincidence. [1] - http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/jordan-jesse-go [2] - https:/…
I don’t think there’s enough evidence that they’re inspired by each other.
movement lines aren’t original. they’re a classic visual archetype, commonly used to convey movement in static images. they exist in every comic book ever printed.
Sans-serif fonts in all caps consisting of two circular letters “G”and “O” can look similar, depending on who’s looking
no car
Re: Go's New Brand
#258Looks like a courier company. Very bland and corporate looking which I guess is the focus of Go as a language. It am a mediocre programmer so I really like Go, it is my main language, but it is an uninspiring language by design. This logo looks aimed at suits and not the Go community. That might not be a bad thing for Go jobs and for Google. Open source communities often have puns in naming or plushy worthy logos and…
Reminds me of the playful acronym for PHP, which is "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor".
Re: Go's New Brand
#259I know folks love the gopher, but I’m a fan of this to be honest. The hand drawn gopher just looked... childish? It definitely didn’t give me the impression of an efficient and well put together programming language.
The Go gopher is a redraw of Glenda, the Plan 9 bunny. Many of Plan 9's principals worked on Go, which is itself an update of Alef, Plan 9's planned systems language, before it was canned and replaced with C. I'm sure he'll still be around as a mascot. He's still on the site's main page. I really don't see the problem with him -- most commercial internet servers run a kernel with a cute penguin mascot, and many of th…
You forgot Inferno and Limbo.
Re: Go's New Brand
#260Reading the comments here makes it clear why most programmers should stay away from design. I've programmed for 20 years now, but that stupid gopher and the way it was everywhere was a serious put off for me on giving Go a look. Nerdy AF. Good riddance. I wonder if there was a huge internal battle between the brand savvy people which realized how terrible the gopher was, and the Go creators. Guys, don't be so stereot…
Are... are you comparing the branding for a programming language to the branding for a massive multinational consumer product company? Here's a more down-to-earth thought experiment: Think about the intentions/audience behind a programming language vs the intentions behind a massive consumer product company like Apple. I like the programming languages I use to be free and open-source - not constricted by some giganti…
I'm pretty sure the intended audience for this logo / branding is not programmers but managers & customers. Programmers are here because of the qualities of the language and tooling, but business guys get nervous when you tell them you want to use that tool with that cute and funny mascot.
I think google is trying to make Go look serious and respectable from a business guy point of view, and especially not make them think "it's a hobbyist counter-culture thing". No one cares about the suit ? You bet those guys do, they wear suits.