The window points away from the wordmark instead of towards it, which is distracting for me. Actually I'm indifferent about the design, it's the self-fellating design talk that gets me. "The team designed the system to fit into lines of perspective." – Four squares is a "system"? "The clean lines, flat shape and bold color of the logo reflect the design principles of Microsoft’s Metro design language." Clean lines, flat shape and bold color, therefore it's awesome! Haven't heard that one before. If only they used Gotham, it would have been a winner for sure.
From the windows team blog: "Our final goal was for the new logo to be humble, yet confident. Welcoming you in with a slight tilt in perspective and when you change your color, the logo changes to reflect you. It is a “Personal” Computer after all." I don't think the logo is very humble or confident. It's more precocious and stoic, a distant but intimate embrace of hue and shape, altering its nature to mirror the viewer's physical spirit.
Seriously though, the logo is pretty interesting because I get the feeling of a big shift at Microsoft. Whether or not this is reality is something else, but looking at the Metro "design language", it seems that Microsoft is actually trying something different with the aim of improving their product.
Pentagram's Windows 8 page
Windows Team blog
The description of that logo is so pretentious it makes me want to punch the designers in their stupid faces.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, you've totally revamped the blog. Crazy!
ReplyDeleteAs for the the logo and their new design direction... my opinion is mixed. It's a lot cleaner for sure, and their logo does reflect that, designer buzzword bullshit aside. The actual "window" on the left looks a bit off, though. And the name seems a bit antiquated, considering they're basically moving away from windows entirely. The actual functionality of the interface doesn't really work for me. I've played with some of their Windows phones here and there and I've seen the demos for their so-called Metro interface for Windows 8. The approach is pretty visually appealing, for sure. It's very unique, and I commend them for that. But, I find it looks rather cluttered and difficult to quickly scan. Basically every icon becomes a randomly sized tile with live updating information... they're sort of a combination of widgets and regular icons. The live updating information makes for a lack of visual consistency over time. With static icons, they always look the same, so you can instantly identify their purpose. I think it's possible to do the live updating thing well, but on this Metro interface, there aren't enough visually consistent elements to reel your eyes in. The random size and orientation of the tiles only compounds this effect. I also don't care for how a lot of their banner text is cut off on the edges of the screen. A lot of their interfaces seem to scroll horizontally a lot, as if you're viewing a segment of a big poster or something. It's interesting, but it gives me a feeling of tunnel vision.
I don't want to call it "bad" or something. I can actually see this working for a lot of people. Maybe this is my inner German coming out. I need order! Consistency!
I'm pretty sure microsoft is pandering to the demographic that only uses computers for facebook and youtube. Useless twats...
ReplyDelete