Android's New Logo: Innovation or Too Plain?

Last week, Google made some new sweeping new changes to a few of their products. Perhaps their biggest announcement was that they were releasing a new design language for Android, Chrome OS and some of their other products. Android One is a new reference design for hardware that is supposed to help manufacturers. The other major announcement that they made at its developers conference was that they were giving Android a new look with a new logo design. Yeah! I love new logo releases.

Now, before you all get too excited, the Android little green robot droid that we have all come to know and love will still be a main visual identity of the Android brand. The change that Google is making to the Android logo is only a change to the Android watermark, not the whole brand. The original Android logo watermark was very robotic and futuristic. This new Android watermark is an all-lowercase typeface that has a much softer and gentler feel. Personally, I like the new Android logo. I feel like it is more appealing to today’s modern consumer and I like its friendlier feel. It is simple yet refined and distinct. I think that this new Android logo is striking in its simplicity and not the other way around.

Before...

Now...


Android is a popular operating system that is based on Linux. It was designed mostly for touch screen devices such as smartphones and tablets and, because it is an open-source code, many developers have contributed to and expanded this technology over the last few years. Android was officially purchased by Google in 2005 and earlier this year Google announced that there are over 1 billion active monthly Android users.

Some people on the Internet are saying that the new Android logo has a striking resemblance to the logo used by the Bloomingdale's department store chains. Have a look? What do you think?

I think that they do look very similar but then again, that might not be such a bad thing. Isn’t Bloomingdale’s a very popular department store in the US? By having a logo that is similar to this already popular and established brand, perhaps this will subtly lend creditability to Android and subliminally increase consumer’s confidence in Android. Far fetched? Maybe, and I am sure that it wasn’t at all Google’s intention, but we all know the power of subliminal marketing.



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