In Google's new logo, serifs a no-go

The print in Gutenburg bible is higher resolution than the type on most (non-hi-DPI) screens, though, so the serifs are visible and useful. On digital screens, the serifs make everything muddy at small sizes.

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I came across a perfect expression of this concept a few days ago:
Everyone wants progress, but no one wants change.

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" would read again"

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Unless, apparently, theyā€™re thick, brutish slab serifs. Kindle, Iā€™m looking at you.

ā€œfiā€ to serifs, i say!

Why drop the squirly g? I like those gā€™s.

I think we are due for some backlash to stark minimalism. Time for the return of fiddly bits.

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I guess Iā€™m the only person who hated the old logo and likes the new one?

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Thatā€™s[1] a ligature, you insensitive clod. :stuck_out_tongue:

[1] okay, should beā€¦

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Wow the vitriol is surprising. As soon as Iā€™d seen the new logo, the old one instantly looked dated. Especially on mobile (the lower-case g as an app icon is terrible) the old logo was really out of step with the relentlessly simplified and streamlined aesthetic of their applications and their competitors.

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They are both kinda enh, but the squiggly lower case g on the old logo was nice.

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Made this earlier today, because it was obviously needed.

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Personally, I love serifs. Because some asshole font designers donā€™t think itā€™s important to make I l | and 1 look in any way distinct from each other. Because ā€œfuck communication, fonts are just decoration, and not at all important for transmitting information.ā€

Also, my exact first thought looking at the new logo was ā€œKindergartenā€.

Does google think weā€™re so simple our eyes will get snagged on the hook of a properly differentiated lowercase ā€œLā€?

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THAT THAT THAT!!!

Whoever designs a font that has identical looking symbols, double so if within the bottom 127 bytes of ASCII, should get publicly hanged as a warning for other ā€œdesignersā€.

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Iā€™d be happy with just tarring and feathering. Then making them write out their fontā€™s full unicode index page in 8x8 foot letters on the beach using a stick.

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I wasted too much time dealing with people who couldnā€™t read passwords because their mail or chat client or whatever else used crappy font that made different characters look the same.

So, rope it is. A bullet is too good for them.

Good heavens. Many folk design fonts knowing that information will be viewed in context. Typography (in practice), is also a matter of the choices of the end-user. If you find you donā€™t see enough visual difference between a few symbols in one typeface, there are literally thousands of other fonts to choose from instead.

Typography doesnā€™t exist to make | universally distinct enough from 1, I, or l. Thatā€™s why we have fonts like Source Code Pro or Courier.

Itā€™s fine. Minimalism works best when the information it contains is paramount. Google appears to understand this, and this is how Google works: hereā€™s your info, see ya.

In that sense, I think the logo works very well. Nobody remembers logos anyway, itā€™s just not important. So why would they invest in a ā€œmemorableā€ logo for a service which works purely by redirecting users away once they get their results? Visually, that would be wasteful.

The old logos were tackyā€”engineers arenā€™t always gifted with a sense of whatā€™s tasteful in design; thatā€™s ok, (although if you hire Scott Kim, you never go wrong). This change is a good improvement on that.

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For different reasons, though. The serifs also help the ink to bleed properly, and mimc the cuts that Romans made in stone to give the letters cleaner endings. Sans serif fonts had problems with ink bleed, thatā€™s why Bell created Bell Sans. LED displays are the opposite, and prefer cleaner lines over serifs, since they still are blocky and donā€™t have to compensate for how the ink and paper interact.

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That is not the attitude of any type designer Iā€™ve ever known of. Have you talked to one? These people are obsessed with the tiniest detail that affects legibility. Maybe their bosses/clients think that way. Probably.

Probably, itā€™s just that I mostly ever run into Times New Roman, Calibri, Tahoma, Courier New, and Arial. And the only ones I can unambiguously tell all the characters apart with 100% accuracy even when Iā€™m not even paying attention is Courier New and Times New Roman. And that matters, pretty often when all you do is work on scripts with no sentence structure or natural grammar.

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