Hacker News Reader

Comment by zokier | Hacker News Reader

This makes me incredibly (to me) sad. The identity is so completely soulless, and the logo is the opposite of timeless, trying to grasp currently oh so hip and pop retro aesthetic. Nevermind that the retro logo and super sleek modern visual identity seems to clash with each other, both are abandoning the playfulness that was so prevalent before, most clearly evident in the various Go gopher illustrations.

And its not that the designs here are bad in isolation; overall the visual identity is very sleek, and I could imagine it working well for something else; RedHat and JetBrains are the first things that come to mind. But for Go, this logo is the one that I acknowledge:

https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png

Funny thing here is that I'm don't even like Go that much, and still I had such strong negative reaction to this branding.

View on HN

The logo is awful.

- it ham-fistedly plays on the name Go (look, the logo is "going"...)

- it is not opinionated (it conforms seamlessly to contemporary corporate logo design, it looks like stock art)

- it does not repay sustained attention

Go is a brutalist language. Clean lines, no frills, lots of power, close enough to the metal. I want monotype, exposed beams and concrete, RTFM, no ugly movement lines.

I would actually rather they had taken a photo of the word "Go" written in concrete.

And honestly, I don't care about any of these things, it's just window dressing on a very solid programming tool. It's frustrating when the miss is that obvious, though. Whoever pushed this through was clearly very risk averse, rushed, or both.

The logo also appears to have lifted several elements from the podcast Jordan, Jesse, Go [1]. The font is almost identical. It has the white text on almost the exact same shade of blue. It has the three lines trailing part of the logo.

EDIT: Here [2] are the two logos side by side. The number of similarities would make this one hell of a coincidence.

[1] - http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/jordan-jesse-go

[2] - https://i.imgur.com/0KkdFR1.png

I don’t think there’s enough evidence that they’re inspired by each other.

movement lines aren’t original. they’re a classic visual archetype, commonly used to convey movement in static images. they exist in every comic book ever printed.

Sans-serif fonts in all caps consisting of two circular letters “G”and “O” can look similar, depending on who’s looking

no car

>they’re inspired by each other.

That is unfortunate phrasing. The Jordan, Jesse, Go logo has been used for roughly a decade and the podcast is older than the Go language. There is only one possible direction that any inspiration could have flowed.

Any one or two of these specific details can be explained away, but at a certain point the number of coincidence start to indicate that they are not in fact coincidences.

You’d have to get it from the artist to be sure.

But there is not enough evidence here, to suggest that the new go logo lifted elements from that other logo.

Motion lines are not a coincidence they are a common solution to the problem of conveying motion in static imagery. It’s as common as using a cup when the problem being addressed is how to drink coffee.

A sans-serif word-mark is also not unique. It’s trendy. Everyone’s doing it. The major difference between the old google logo and the current one was the removal of serifs. For a company Google’s size that’s one expensive redesign just to remove serifs, since they had to get it re-printed on everything such as cars, signs, business cards, letterhead, clothing, etc. Going with a sans-serif is not an original design choice, it’s a trendy and safe one. And sans serif texts tend to look like each other in all caps with circular letters.

Ehh. I’m trying but I’m not seeing any peculiar elements that the two logos share, including the combination of public domain design choices, to the extent that would suggest one lifted from the other.

Um, no. The updated Go logo is a refresh of the original Go logo when the language was first introduced.

https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png

Oddly enough I think I prefer that logo to the new branding

Jordan, Jesse, Go! also immediately came to my mind when I saw these new logos. Based on the visual similarities, it seems the designer was probably inspired by the JJGO logo. This also reminded me that there was already an existing language named "Go!" when golang was released. Maybe they should add the exclamation point now to go for the full JJGO look.

Ha ha, I tend to agree.

In fact, a font that looked like steel or concrete might be good. Wonder if there is one. If so, they could have made the logo to be just the word Go (as I spelled it as regards to case) in that font. Silvery steel font on a gray or black background, or some similar combination.

Even a font / image / logo signifying a rugged wood (mahogany or some hardwood?) in some way might have been a good one. Signifying the Go philosophy - a no-frills, just-get-the-work done-kind of language.

Just thinking aloud ... :)

Perhaps something like the Google Authenticator logo? https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=google+authenticator+lo...

Ha, yes, though it is not exactly the same as what I was visualizing (my idea was minus the rivets), it does look good.

Nice, thanks.

Incidentally, I viewed your above URL for Google Authenticator logo images in mobile a while earlier (after being able to view it fine - with all the images - on desktop PC). And on mobile (Android), amusingly, it seems like Chrome has done its usual optimization of heavy pages (by googleweblight.com or similar means), which often helps save bandwidth and speeds the rendering time, but this time, it resulted in it optimizing out all the images that should show up on that page :) Not a single image shows up, I just get the header and footer of the page. If anyone from Google is reading this, please pass on the info to the relevant team, so they can look into this.

That's kinda hilarious but altogether probably unsurprising. With Android and Chrome using Google as the default search, I suspect the number of people who test against Bing Image Search is a small quantity. :/

I'd agree here. It's like they tried to make the new branding as generic as they possibly could.

I liked the simple, basic site that Go has always used. It seems inevitable that they'll redo the site, to include megabytes of JavaScript for features that nobody wants, like hijacked scrolling. (The site[0] for the design agency they talk about loads about 3 MB. Almost none of it is images. The site loads all that to display approximately ten words.)

Also,

>The circular shape of the letters hints at the eyes of the Go gopher, creating a familiar shape and allowing the mark and the mascot to pair well together.

If by "pairing well together", you mean not going together in any way, then yes.

[0]: http://within.us/

Jesus christ that site is bad.

It's like they tried to tick every box in the "obnoxious and annoying" category:

* It's inexplicably large

* It's slow af

* Scroll hijacking

* back button hijacking

* There's elements that appear when I scroll, but they disappear so you don't actually appear to be able to look them any more than in passing. (Notably the colourful logos for Google and Priceline).

* Did I mention it's slow? Scrolling is slow. Clicking on things is slow. Animations are slow.

* ~Half the code isn't even minified and a coworker pointed out that some of it doesn't appear to even be used.~ Nevermind, some of it does appear to be minified/resized.

* 3.8+ Megabytes of JS, really? Really really? Why?

I like the part where dragging on my phone scrolls the page the opposite of the direction I'm dragging.

I think this happens when I drag one direction, then change my mind and drag the other, and the site (sorry, "app") forgets to forget my previous drag.

It doesn't even have a favicon!

I am so utterly infuriated at their incompetence. How could they not see these obvious points? I hope they're reading because they ruined the face of an otherwise, very cool programming language project in our times.

Let's all send angry emails to them

I visited the website. It just shows a big W: https://kek.gg/i/78bwZ-.png

You've got to keep scrolling. It'll take a while.

You're not missing that much, though, since there are quite literally (yes, I counted) fifteen words on the entire home page.

The proposal makes me sad as well.

As someone who uses Go everyday -- professionally and personally -- Go's branding was always simple and fun, which (to me) was reflected in the language itself. The new proposal is trendy, but Go was never about being trendy -- Go as a language explicitly rejects so many trendy features from other languages. Go to me is simple, fast, fun, and doesn't change a whole lot (a very good thing).

Most of the Gophers I know, myself included, are a little weird and different -- in a good way. So was the branding. I liked that... and I'm going to miss that.

Look at it this way, Google's making a commercial statement with this, that they think Go is important enough for them to brand.

It's like Duke and Java -- Duke still exists as a mascot. I suspect the gopher will be around for a long time to come. If anything this is a harbinger of Go becoming more mainstream than it is already (think TIOBE top-10).

No, this all started with an email to UX/design of "I want a professionally designed slide deck for this talk I am giving" and they sent it off to an agency.

There is no way self respecting Googlers were involved in this shit show.

Somehow I think that the coffee cup is better than running letters.

>But for Go, this logo is the one that I acknowledge:

> https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png

Check the link again. They pulled the rug out from under you.

The link still refers to the old logo for me.

I think you might have been confused by the fact that the new logo is basically just a polished-up version of the original one. Were you expecting the gopher at that URL?

>Were you expecting the gopher at that URL

Yes, I was expecting the gopher, especially because of the URL's path including the word gopher. Looking at the wayback machine shows you're right, this is the same picture that's been at that URL for years. I just always thought of the gopher as their logo, didn't realize there was another logo they used (I don't use Go so not too familiar with it).

Your first paragraph immediately reminded me of the logo/CI transition for one of Germany's largest hospital operators, "Helios" (subsidiary of Fresenius):

"old" logo (easily recognizable as a medical institution, easily discernible "H" for "Helios"):

http://www.medical-network-hessen.de/images/News/Helios_Klin...

"new" logo ("H" not clearly discernable in the two green blobs, no reference to medicine at all):

https://www.helios-gesundheit.de/fileadmin/_processed_/d/4/c...

All in all, from quite good to meh.

> "H" not clearly discernable in the two green blobs, no reference to medicine at all

I've never seen either of these logos before, but in the new one I immediately see the "H" formed by the white space between the two "green blobs", which to me look like "healing hands" and which I take as a medical reference (although TBH they do make me think "chiropractor" rather than "doctor"). I don't think the new one is great, but I much prefer it to the old one, which looks like a very half-assed attempt to combine an H with the Rod of Asclepius. It's like they weren't even trying.

What I meant to say is that the old one is a logo that (without any text or anything) practically screams "hospital"/"medical institution" to anyone looking at it for the first time, while the new one is rather ambiguous, especially if you have no context for it.

  the logo is the opposite of timeless, trying to grasp currently oh so hip and pop retro aesthetic

I'd have expected to see that logo on the e-bikes scattered across the neighborhood.

> The identity is so completely soulless, and the logo is the opposite of timeless

So true. When I look at the new logo, it reminds me of Adidas in the 1980s.

unrelated to this thread...

but Adidas had plenty of soul in the 80s. RunDMC wrote an anthem specifically about the brand [0], which completely changed the Hip Hop's relationship w/ commerce.

[0] — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=virlWcB_G-E

> I could imagine it working well for something else

this sums up why this new brand isn't good.

This is true of ANY good logo before it gets traction.

There's nothing special about the Apple logo (or Apple as the name of a corporate name), for example. I mean, seriously, it's a clip art apple with a bit out of it.

What makes it a great logo is everything in your head and heart that is associated, good or bad, with that image.

I didn't even know Go had a logo, so long as they aren't touching the Gopher I honestly don't care.

But they are. That's what this is about.

They're not; there's a model sheet for the gopher in the brand guide.

Ya, same here. To me, the gopher was the logo - I didn't even know if they had a separate logo or not, and never bothered. I mean, when you have one like the gopher, why do you need anything else?

Gopher mascot and no logo was fine. I do see - I cannot call it a trend, but multiple individual instances - of companies going from a better logo / brand image to a sometimes worse one (this is purely subjective opinion on my part, of course, not based on any objective criteria at all).

Another example is Google's current logo of the company name. I don't find it attractive - flat and sort of dull. But the one they had earlier for a long time, was attractive, the colors sort of seemed to gleam or sparkle, and the overall effect was pleasing, even though the colors were the sort of primary colors you find in the kindergarten.

Note: All this said just as a guy who has no UI design expertise at all, just speaking as a layman to that field.

Relevant: golang-nuts mailing list discussion from 2011 where someone claimed the logo lacked "professionalism" and was thoroughly mocked for it (including by a younger, more juvenile yours truly).

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-nuts/JZ-gUROf...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com