“It’s hard to imaging Coke without the classic red label and white, old-time Coca-Cola script that goes back more than a century, or Apple without, well, its apple icon that has a small piece cut out,” Rex Crum reports for MarketWatch.
“Then there is Microsoft, the world’s largest software company,” Crum reports. “Microsoft hasn’t always been known for being the most innovative tech giant, but it is seeking to change that with a new slate of products and, as of Thursday, a new logo for the first time since Ronald Reagan was president.”
Crum reports, “The new logo is the fifth one in Microsoft’s 37-year history, but the first new logo since 1987.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: They need a lot more than a new logo.
Staggering.
Wow. Bad, even for Microsoft.
THIS is bad
http://twitter.com/cubiq/status/238329183636422656/photo/1
oops. Just wanted to link the picture… Not that dudes entire tweat..
fantastic regardless
very funny and great comparison
dunno, looks very similar to tv’s horrible, new interface design.
Metro (or whatever Microsoft is going to call it) probably *really* sucks if you are colorblind.
Simplicity is usually good, but apparently things can be too simple.
Looks like something my granddaughter would have made. Then thrown into the trash can because it wasn’t very good. She would start over and do better. Daddy and grandpa are longtime Mac users (professionally as well as far fun) as is my six-year-old granddaughter. She was using an iPad at four. Last month I saw her try to use an android tablet when we were visiting someone. She gave up after a couple of minutes and said “this is too hard,do you think they have an iPad daddy”? She’s Mac through and through just like us. Even kids can tell quality when they see it.
Haha ha brilliant. Will someone get this kid an iPad? Who needs cheap half baked wanna be imitations?
Hipsters got ahold of that one.
Meaning…Microsoft is a bunch of squares, man.
squares, boxed in innovation, can’t think out of the box, wavy things are too hard to draw.
It had to be squares, Apple has a patent on the rectangle. 😉
Absolutely rubbish.
Waste of money, would have taken a design student 20mins using adobe illustrator to come up with that POS.
What’d said student have to do for the other 18 minutes? Wait for Windows to boot?
Illustrator? That is a clear MS Paint job, Powerpoint at a push.
Agreed.
20 minutes?
Possibly, more like five minutes. Unless their was an obtuse argument over square (metro tiled) colors. 😉
Assuming thousands of dollars potentially spent for something a high school art student can come up with.
Actually… some of the most recognized logos look simple. That’s what makes them powerful. IBM.
Even Steve Jobs recognized this when he asked Paul Rand to design the NeXT logo.
This logo is what is needed. A general logo, updated that can go on every product they sell.
No doubt simple logos work the best.
However, the NeXT logo is in a different league.
It is too easy to replicate the Microsoft logo in a minute or less.
Open Illustrator, draw a square and copy and paste three more. Grid arrange, add four colors and select the Agenda font with the text tool and type Microsoft in upper and lower case. Done.
Well, if you have to pair kern the type it may add a few seconds.
I’m not saying this is a bad looking logo. It does brand the Metro GUI well. SIMPLE, yes. Sophisticated? Not so sure.
All that said, it is a cleaner solution improvement from the previous logo.
It is not bad , the colors are unique…
Too bad the products are just beyond use lol
Maybe it is just my crappy dell monitor, but the colors look like the same MS crappy corporate logo colors as before…
They are. With the stylized squares replaced by actual squares.
yawn
I’m surprised the symbol isn’t a steaming pile of dog turd in Zune brown.
“steaming pile of dog turd in Zune brown”
I think that’s the technical name, not the logo.
“Meh”crosoft.
My favorite: Microcruft
It’s the rotated “Simon” tm electronic game color scheme – no innovation here
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_(game)
“Simon’s tones, on the other hand, were designed to always be harmonic,[2] no matter what order they were played in, and consisted of an A major triad in second inversion:
E-note (blue, lower right);
C#-note (yellow, lower left);
A-note (red, upper right).
E-note (green, upper left, an octave lower than blue);
The re-released version of Simon
Simon was later re-released by Milton Bradley – now owned by Hasbro – in its original circular form, though with a translucent case rather than plain black. It was also sold as a two-sided Simon Squared version, with the reverse side having eight buttons for head-to-head play, and as a keychain (officially licensed by Fun4All) with simplified gameplay (only having Game 1, Difficulty 4 available). Other variations of the original game, no longer produced, include Pocket Simon and the eight-button Super Simon, both from 1980. Finally, Nelsonic released an official wristwatch version of Simon.[3]
Later versions of the game being sold include a pocket version of the original game in a smaller, yellow, oval-shaped case; Simon Trickster, which plays the original game as well as variations where the colors shift around from button to button (Simon Bounce), where the buttons have no colors at all (Simon Surprise), or where the player must repeat the sequence backwards (Simon Rewind);[4] and a pocket version of Simon Trickster.” Some Microsofty looked down at their Simon keychain and copied the color scheme verbatim without realizing it was upside down.
awww — you woke up the patent trolls!!!
Nice! It does look remarkably outdated when put side by side with the Simon. However, it their defense, it is hard to come up with a fourth unique color when the three base RGB colors have already been selected. There is not a clear choice for the fourth.
Nonetheless, their new logo does perfectly represent the company: nothing says copycat like “Simon says”.
New perfume on the same old pig!!
It’s better than a white apple. Need the rainbow apple back (see BootXChanger).
No it doesn’t. The shape itself is iconic, and colours just complicate the manufacturing process. A MacBook with a multicoloured logo glowing on the open lid would just look like the kids had attacked it with their magic markers.
In the Age of Aquarius and Hair, some years later, rainbow logo worked well.
The current white logo with the demensional slash is an elegant evolution.
It’s still s.o.s.
There were actually some really good designs put forth but after filtering through seven committees, four vice-presidents and Ballmer himself it ended up with an inorganic, boring and strikingly uncomfortable feel.
Just like their software.
You just described Ballmer himself.
That will fix everything wrong with Microsoft.
I mean, it worked for Apple, didn’t it? Since changing their logo in 1998, AAPL is up about 10,000%….
Their logo now is their best product. I wish Word and Excel were as sleek as this. Wait … no. I don’t use Word and Excel anymore but Pages and Numbers.
No depth. — No surprise.
Isn’t Apple the worlds largest software company?
+1
Hmm…Now why was I expecting to see a square with a bite out of the side? Probably they’d put the bite on the left instead of the right so they could say they were NOT copying Apple.
Great comment! Although it’s probably true, they probably considered it!
Nah, that is going to be Samsung’s new logo… An ‘S’ with a bite taken out of it.
What, me copy?!
What they should have is a square with a bite taken out of it AND a puddle below of puke that would naturally occur. Of course, Microsoft would describe it as a drop shadow signifying depth but we know better.
Boring, but I think it is referencing their “metro” tiles. Which is something they are going to regret on pc’s if the reviews are accurate. Which I believe they are, by the way.
Not too dissimilar from the logo in the Chrome address bar, just reordered the colors a bit.
Innovation. ®
Hey, aren’t those the new colors for the kick stands? Those tiles are the best they could do when they shrink down the logo to fit on inferior 7″ displays.
My old Commodore 64 is much better!
Need the Guy that tatooed the Zune logo on his body to follow up with the New Windows Logo. One failed product and the newest failing product.
I hope they paid a few millions for that. Primary colors, looks like it would belong in a nursery.