The Next Microsoft

[pianoknight]

Absolutely stunning. This guy needs to get a job in Redmond and help MS revamp their corporate image.

http://www.minimallyminimal.com/journal/2012/7/3/the-next-microsoft.html

[BrandMooreArt]

the direction is a bit too close to Apple i think, but it is hard to find student work that good.

[Cola]

i personally don't care for it and feel like it is over-simplified and wouldn't be very recognizable.

[CS85]

Cool idea. For what he's trying to do, I like it, but would it fit the company? No.

[Conrad.]

Cool idea. For what he's trying to do, I like it, but would it fit the company? No.

+1. Nice, refined work, but the concept and marketing sense is not there at all.

[vmd9]

i personally don't care for it and feel like it is over-simplified and wouldn't be very recognizable.

Yeah, it's really not very impressive at all. I mean the "slate" logo is very boring and lacks personality. The real design of the new windows 8 log is much better. This project was done in 3 days, and it clearly shows.

[raysox]

I think I'm just a sucker for greyscale and orange

[Enio125]

That's not a logo; it's a rhombus.

[vmd9]

That's not a logo; it's a rhombus.

Exactly. How is combining a rhombus and stock photos good design??

[GeauxColonels]

I'm not at all impressed by the "logo." the other work done was very nice, but the "slate" just doesn't do anything for me. It's not unique enough. It's not identifiable.

[Ben7]

really cool stuff.

love the moon/space/future nods, as well as the new font and the whole icon packagee, though I'd prefer a more orange orange, less red orange

[pianoknight]

Looks like the critiques are a mixed bag.

I agree that the rhombus by itself is too simple. But at the same time, look at some major brands like Target, JC Penney, or even Apple. Their logos are little more than glorified geometric shapes (or fruit).

I like it, largely because typical MS design is so cluttered with useless branding and copy.

[BBTV]

So basically just make everything look the way apple does things. The presentation is well done, but that's about it. For all the talk about the future and a new "inspiring" direction, it's incredibly lacking, and would just make me think that they've submitted to apple and become just another imitator rather than an innovator.

The idea of an iconic mark is good (though I have no problem with their new 4-windows-in-perspective logo) but that shape just isn't going to work, especially since you can't trademark a geometric shape (I guess you could tm it's use on gadgets, but I'm sure that could be worked around by imitators.)

[infrared41]

So basically just make everything look the way apple does things. The presentation is well done, but that's about it. For all the talk about the future and a new "inspiring" direction, it's incredibly lacking, and would just make me think that they've submitted to apple and become just another imitator rather than an innovator.

Pretty much. What I got from it was "what if Microsoft looked like Apple?

[Cola]

Anyways, I think Dodge has already claimed the shape.

[missouri tigers]

I agree with what others have said about it being extremely reminiscent of Apple's branding. Using something derivative of your main competitors' brand is something that any company would be well advised not to do.

I mean, just look at the applications and especially the packaging. Its hard to do so while thinking of anything other than Apple's own branding.

[vmd9]

Looks like the critiques are a mixed bag.

I agree that the rhombus by itself is too simple. But at the same time, look at some major brands like Target, JC Penney, or even Apple. Their logos are little more than glorified geometric shapes (or fruit).

I like it, largely because typical MS design is so cluttered with useless branding and copy.

Major brands that use simple designs either have history or the icons are very direct. Target, Apple, etc are about as direct as possible.

Oversimplified or abstract logos can sometimes just come off as lazy or uninspired. Just imagine the backlash if Microsoft actually unveiled a new logo that was just a rhombus. I guarantee the public opinion would be "this is the best they could come up with?". Maybe designers (after seeing the whole presentation) would get it, but as a stand alone entity it just doesn't work.

[andrewharrington]

That's not a logo; it's a rhombus.

Exactly. How is combining a rhombus and stock photos good design??

It's not a rhombus. It's a parallelogram. A rhombus is a quadrilateral with four sides of equal length.

Looks like the critiques are a mixed bag.

I agree that the rhombus by itself is too simple. But at the same time, look at some major brands like Target, JC Penney, or even Apple. Their logos are little more than glorified geometric shapes (or fruit).

I like it, largely because typical MS design is so cluttered with useless branding and copy.

Precisely. Critiquing this with the notion that it's generic is the same as critiquing it without context. Without context, simple logos are often generic. This may be a very simple shape, one that's not very remarkable, unique, memorable or what have you, but without the context of how it's actually launched, applied to product, marketed and exploited in its marketplace, it's not really valid to critique the form based on its own generic quality. I always come back to this as a primer for it, because it's the same principle:

This article is boss.

Major brands that use simple designs either have history or the icons are very direct. Target, Apple, etc are about as direct as possible.

Oversimplified or abstract logos can sometimes just come off as lazy or uninspired. Just imagine the backlash if Microsoft actually unveiled a new logo that was just a rhombus. I guarantee the public opinion would be "this is the best they could come up with?". Maybe designers (after seeing the whole presentation) would get it, but as a stand alone entity it just doesn't work.

If you're going to make that statement, you have to look at it from the other side of the curtain as well. Imagine if social media and the general awareness of design was the same in the advertising heyday as it is today, to the point where there were people who actually cared when corporations unveiled new logos. What if ABC actually unveiled a new logo that was just a black ball with their lettering? What if Target actually unveiled a logo that was just a couple red circles? What if Nike actually unveiled a logo that was just a nondescript swoosh?

The answer, of course, is that public opinion would be, "This is the best they could come up with?" This is for two reasons:

One is because the times are different. Back then, lives weren't as inundated with trademarks or advertising and frankly, there were only a fraction then compared to how many there currently are. There weren't press conferences for every new logo. There wasn't an internet that made every brand potentially global. If you lived in NY, you might never know about regional Chicago or LA trademarks. There wasn't a community of people waiting for the next new unveiling, and if they did exist, they certainly wouldn't have expectations as high as ours because design wasn't accessible and design awareness wasn't seeping into the mainstream at a record pace. We're always on the lookout for a perfectly unique, memorable and well-crafted brand, and nothing is ever good enough for the public. It's very hard to create something truly unique, and very easy for the public to say, "This is derivative of that." The truth is, most of those unique, memorable and well-crafted logos and brands aren't very successful, and by that I mean they're never seen on a large scale. They're usually the product of small companies sharing a vision with a small designer or firm, and they rarely go global.

The second reason is because when something is unveiled, it lacks context. If the ABC, Target or Nike logos showed up on Brand New without any cache, history or context, they would get the same reaction as the red parallelogram:

"They spent six figures on three letters in a circle?"

"That looks like a first year design student did it in five minutes."

"Really? Another swoosh logo?"

But of course, with the benefit of context, we know each of these brands to be among the best in their respective industries, just as this Microsoft identity could be, say, if it were to become the face of a great resurgence of design and growth for the Microsoft brand. On the other hand, this could just as well be a wildly unique and memorable logo that, if it were under-utilized or simply acting as a mask for a bit of the same ol' same Microsoft, would be eternally saddled with some bad context, and it would be just another logo. This is why you can't judge something like this student project solely on how generic or non-generic the form is. There are plenty of great brands built on generic logos, and plenty of unforgettable logos representing terribly forgettable companies.

That said, visually I think this looks good, and could make a great identity if some of the finer points of it were steered away from the Apple aesthetic. Personally, I'd like to see the signature Windows colors and liberal use of the space backdrops to contrast with Apple's white imagery.

[a3uge]

Pretty unremarkable. But I agree that the Microsoft brand could use some work.

Part of the problem Microsoft has is 1. It hasn't consolidated its branding across products well enough. 2. Branding gets revamped every couple of years instead of fine tuned.

While everything Microsoft owns does not need to be branded identically (YouTube is branded as a nice standalone), I do think Microsoft would benefit from claiming X-Box and Bing as their own. It's almost as if Microsoft is afraid of their own name. While the Microsoft name may have a certain stigma attached to it, I don't understand why Microsoft has gone through a re-branding with Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Windows Office, but high potential products Bing and MSN.com are completely ignored.

[chuckymack]

Man, Harrington -- you freakin' NAILED it.

Also, a3uge brings up a good point -- one that I think Google has emphatically used to strengthen itself. I think Microsoft would be wise to do the same.