Google Cloud Platform Icon Library for Architecture Diagrams | Hacker News Reader

Google Cloud Platform Icon Library for Architecture Diagrams

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121 pointseitally38 comments

This is one of my 20% projects at Google. AMA.

Not sure if the 'diagram examples' at the bottom of the page is supposed to have links, but it doesn't.

Each of those diagrams are in the Slides and Powerpoint. There was no immediately clean way to link them (we staged it but ended up removing it). Good suggestion, I think we'll be adding links to Slide pages soon once we are certain we can do it in a clean way.

Can we put the icons and example diagrams into draw.io?

Why did you choose to go with all blue? Could some color could help identify a service's 'family'?

There's a trade-off between using Google Slides (familiarity, non-flowchart features) and LucidChart (more flowchart features). In your experience, when is it worth it to use LucidChart versus Google Slides?

I'm one of the GCP icon library people, but I'm not a collaboration tool expert. With that said, I have tons of tool opinions, as I'm sure many knowledge workers do. Here's my tips on when to use which tool.

#1 use a collaborative tool #2 use a collaborative tool that all your collaborators will use easily #3 use a collaborative tool that makes you very efficient

Lucidchart and other specialized tools will make you more efficient for diagramming because they have snap-to and other pro features, but they won't pass test #2 for some places. That's why we gave you both versions.

What version, templates and tools would you like us to add? Draw.io? Any others?

Draw.io, thank you!

Does Google still do 20% projects? Thought that stopped years ago around the same time as Google X started up.

They definitely still do. It's just not necessarily a formal system - there are a ton of projects out there that people work on while at work that aren't directly related to their main responsibilities, and managers generally are fine with employees taking on 20% projects.

It's still in place and 20% projects are still advertised internally. I think Google might have made it a bit more formal (requiring manager approval etc.), that's all.

If it requires manager approval, that's not really 20% time in my opinion based on the founders statesments below; which is to say, an employee doing what they feel would most benefit a company has little to nothing to do with their managers opinion of what's best for the company.

Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin highlighted the idea in Google's 2004 IPO letter: "We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google," they wrote. "This empowers them to be more creative and innovative."

It doesn't (most of the time) require manager approval.

From Wired 2007, covering an 2005 interview of the then Google CEO Eric Schmidt, now Google Chairman:

"INTERVIEWER: How do people actually do 20 percent time? How do people actually figure out a way to actually get 20 percent of their time for that without working on weekends?

GOOGLE-CEO: They work on weekends."

Source: https://www.wired.com/2007/04/my_other_interv

Thanks Neal! This is immediately useful.

Nice work, Neil. It's not clear to me however which icons, if any, one can use and for what purpose.

See my comment below for what the readme.txt in the dl says.

Since Google holds the copyrights, by default, I wouldn't feel confident using anything here for anything other than personal, private use. Can you clarify?

We updated the terms. It's now reads "The Products and Services logos may be used to accurately reference Google's technology and tools, for instance in architecture diagrams". I hope this clarifies that we want you to use them externally (e.g. blogs, twitter, slides, white papers), and not just privately.

Heads up your gcp-icons.zip file contains .DS_Store and _MACOSX folders/files.

Request: Visio support please...

Kinda nitpicking but some product icons are off. Eg you have an out of date icon for Google analytics and you are using the wrong icon for data studio.

Great project otherwise. Thanks

The icons look way too similar. In fact, the only way to distinguish one from another is by the glyphs. This begs the question: what purpose does the blue hexagon serve besides aesthetics?

As @bowmessage mentioned, couldn't you have a color for each family of service?

Good feedback–and rational. I'll ask the designer to consider removing the blue hexagon and making the icons glyphs. The design predates me. There might be an equally rational explanation for why it is the way it is, and it's worth asking.

I think the hexagon is OK and immediately tells me this is a GCP diagram. It also helps in aligning things when drawing on a grid and creates a unified style.

I would however suggest to differentiate the services by color-coding the background: blue for Compute, red for Storage and DB, orange for Machine Learning etc. This will make it easier to take in the diagrams at a glance.

Here's what design told me, "In the diagrams context - the blue hexagon represents GCP product. The goal is to differentiate GCP from other products and services." My read on this is that blue hexagons makes sense in the context of a heterogenous architecture, but the blue hexagons do not provide value (as you note) if your diagram is all GCP.

I suspect originally when there were only a few services the glyphs were distinct enough.

I totally agree, I have a few shortcuts in my GCE dashboard, but I seem to always forget which one is which. For instance logs, DNS and storage have super similar icons.

I really like the icons, and I do mean this to be funny. I just couldn't resist creating Malicious Cloud Service[1] and Dead API[2]. SVG's available at [3].

[1] http://imgur.com/a/VY6ba [2] http://imgur.com/a/U0wVW [3] https://ufile.io/4de3f

These would never be useful to me, because I've never had anything go wrong – said no one ever! Hah. I love these.

Who created the diagram examples? Are these architecture suggestions?

These examples were created by GCP for the GCPNext 2016 event. There were used to start discussions for user needs. Experts in the specific verticals were consulted in developing the diagrams, but they are not recommended or validated designs--not detailed enough. The diagrams are intended to spark discussions, and so you don't have to start from scratch.

I did several of them, most come from the GCP Solutions Architecture team. AMA!

We are very much looking forward to using them in ours, too!

Would an ad server/logging solution make sense to add? Apart from Amazon's solution I had a real struggle finding something concrete.

Are these icons public domain (or free to use in another way)?

From the presentation: "The Products and Services logos may be used to accurately reference Google's technology and tools."

From the readme.txt in the dl:

'The Products and Services logos may be used to accurately reference Google's technology and tools. Please see www.google.com/permissions for use of Google brand assets and trademarks.'

From that link:

'All of our brand features are protected by applicable trademark, copyright and other intellectual property laws. If you would like to use any of our brand features on your website, in an ad, in an article or book, or reproduce them anywhere else, or in any other medium, you'll need to receive permission from Google first.'

Are the icons available with notations in other languages?

Not yet, it's a great idea. What language would you like?

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