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Reading the comments here makes it clear why most programmers should stay away from design.

I've programmed for 20 years now, but that stupid gopher and the way it was everywhere was a serious put off for me on giving Go a look. Nerdy AF.

Good riddance.

I wonder if there was a huge internal battle between the brand savvy people which realized how terrible the gopher was, and the Go creators.

Guys, don't be so stereotypical, expand your horizon outside of Pokemon and Star Wars esthetics. I'll put it in a more obvious form: a lot of you like Apple, can you imagine for a second that gopher on anything Apple?

Downvotes away...

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> ... that stupid gopher and the way it was everywhere was a serious put off for me on giving Go a look. Nerdy AF.

Go is a programming language whose dominant demographic is nerds.

> ... can you imagine for a second that gopher on anything Apple?

Apple is a consumer oriented tech firm whose niche is high end goods.

> Reading the comments here makes it clear why most programmers should stay away from design.

You don't say.

apple likes their own nerdy mascots. Note the devil horns are a shout out to the freebsd demon. People don't bitch about the python!

http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/bs-d...

And don't forget Clarus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogcow

> Go is a programming language whose dominant demographic is nerds.

Hence why we need a new logo to attract developers from other demographics. A good language without a diverse and wide set of users is worthless.

Are... are you comparing the branding for a programming language to the branding for a massive multinational consumer product company?

Here's a more down-to-earth thought experiment:

Think about the intentions/audience behind a programming language vs the intentions behind a massive consumer product company like Apple.

I like the programming languages I use to be free and open-source - not constricted by some gigantic corporation (coughOracle). Free, open ideals come from the old hobbyist counter culture a few decades ago. That stuff predates me but when I see that ridiculous gopher I feel like they don't care about how they look, and would rather focus on the language itself and keeping their audience (devs) happy. Kind of like - no one cares about the suit, I don't care how you look - just get stuff done.

All this begs the question - why the fuck did they spend time on this branding?

I'm pretty sure the intended audience for this logo / branding is not programmers but managers & customers. Programmers are here because of the qualities of the language and tooling, but business guys get nervous when you tell them you want to use that tool with that cute and funny mascot.

I think google is trying to make Go look serious and respectable from a business guy point of view, and especially not make them think "it's a hobbyist counter-culture thing". No one cares about the suit ? You bet those guys do, they wear suits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogcow

OK, its old - but it certainly served the same purpose in branding "the priesthood" that lived and breathed the ecosystem.

Less prevelent: see Hexley, Darwin's (unofficial) BSD-Devil Platypus mascot - http://www.hexley.com

You don't use a language because you don't like their mascot? Renee's french art is great like Glenda the plan 9 bunny, way better than most mascots.

Many years ago, I've had a project manager reluctant to have us commit to the Hadoop ecosystem because, come on, "Pig", "Zoo"[keeper]... this can't be serious!

Sometimes people are the problem. Of course they're just names and have no incidence whatsoever on the relevance of a project. Until they do. For terrible reasons.

https://webkit.org/blog/189/announcing-squirrelfish/

You realize that the gopher (and glenda before it) was created by professional illustrator and not programmers?

That is true, but its also worth pointing out a bit of context: the gopher was created by Rob Pike's, one of the creators', wife, who happens to be a professional illustrator.

Point being, its not like it was contracted to a professional design team. They took a very efficient programmer-like path: have a relative who knows design make it. And I love that as a geek, and I love the gopher, but from the perspective of a design professional its time the language got a true logo in addition to a geeky mascot.

For those interested in seeing Glenda:

https://blog.golang.org/gopher

That's not that relevant. What's relevant is who was the client who approved it. You can be the most brilliant architect in the world, but if the client want's a McMansion that's what you'll give him (or quit).

"People who don't agree that this is good are just dumb nerds, but UGH I'll get downvoted for this opinion"

1. Predicting downvotes is a great way to get downvotes. 2. Insulting the people you're talking to is a terrible way to convince them of anything. 3. Apple has silly logos everywhere - consider SquirrelFish Extreme and Darwin. 4. It's paramount that, above all, a brand plays to its crowd. Regardless of whatever notions of "good design" you possess, you can't deny that the Go logo designers failed to understand their audience, as evidenced by the reaction on HN and elsewhere.

The brand guidebook is pretty well designed and easy to understand: https://golang.org/s/brandbook

The mascot didn't go away. Too many people in the comments seems to be upset about it...

I knew this, but I found most of her work very offputting. It was certainly a strong and recognizable mascot, but really put me off learning the language for weird emotional reason.

It's a programming language not a consumer product. Who cares? The gopher was fun.

Sometimes you want to show your consumer what technologies you used in the product you're selling. The gopher looks very bad on "made with" slides. In a presentation, I had a slide with tons of logos presenting the technologies we used. In the middle of the javascript, html, css and maybe ruby (don't remember), the gopher looked childish and immature. Sometimes it can be ok (if your customer is a young, cool, laid-back start-upper), but sometimes it is not (think gray-haired guy from an industrial company).

Does the customer really care that a product was made with Go instead of C++, Rust, etc? Ruby has a gem and Rust has a rusted R. I guess those are less childish? Java with it's mocha brand is supposed to be professional looking? The customer sees a cup of coffee and thinks to themselves, "Wow, this product is definitely made with professional grade industry standards!".

The problem is, it looks like a child did it. Not a criticism per se, I personally like its design, but to outsiders (guys with suits), it looks somewhat amateur / immature (and these guys tend to care a lot about those things). And, yes, sometimes these people want to know what they paid for, whether they are customers (in b2b) or they are giving money (like a government agency or something), and a neat slide with lots of logos and oral explanations is often the way to go (pun unintended). Python's logo is an animal, too, but it looks clean and low-profile.

Unfortunately people do care that much about branding. On the bright side, the gopher isn't going away, it's only being relegated to a mascot role, like the Rust Crab.

> can you imagine for a second that gopher on anything Apple?

You mean like Hexley, the Darwin mascot?

Well, Apple's logo is a sideways bitten apple. It's a cartoon too, just more stylish.

> I've programmed for 20 years now, but that stupid gopher and the way it was everywhere was a serious put off for me on giving Go a look

Nerdy? Will you give Go a try if they rename themselves to Luxurious Smart Mice then? :DDDDD

What the fuck does Renee French's work have to do with Pokemon or Star Wars?

What makes this reference even more bizarre is that Pokemon and Star Wars are incredible successful global brands.

To be fair I've seen that gopher plastered on many an Apple macbook (along side a wildebeast, an octopus or even a penguin :P).

The way you express it is a bit problematic and is going to cause a lot of angry replies but I agree. Go looks a bit out place in the corporate World. Like you present your boss a new plan for your project and it's supposed to use Go. You put in the gopher and the boss is gonna take you less seriously directly.

The new logo is good and fit for enterprise

I agree with you and it looks like suc a person was in charge of choosing the new logo, so it’s still bad...

I totally agree. I only started playing with Go a few months ago and remember how amateurish the website and the mascot made it look. It gave the impression that it was a work in progress and research project instead of something that's been around for 8 years and used professionally.

> I only started playing with Go a few months ago and remember how amateurish the website and the mascot made it look.

If good, clean text which displays in any browser is amateurish … then I prefer amateurism to professionalism.

I really appreciate that the Go website (appears to be) good, clean HTML.

> I really appreciate that the Go website (appears to be) good, clean HTML.

Not for long if the design company has their way. Just look at their site: http://within.us/

I had a bad reaction to it too but I think golang has probably crossed a certain threshold of adoption where if they want to grow even further they will have to cut into the market of the general population and those people definitely like that design more than the weird gopher.

the “general population” won’t be programming in any language any time soon. this is to capture the attention of mba types, in the hopes of forcing adoption on technical teams because it seems cool in some ephemeral sense only mba types get

Also known as the Java Gambit

no this is horrible

Or maybe you shouldn't have designers that clearly can't draw.

There's a long history of slightly or outright irreverent logos in the hacker community and you're on a forum that at the very least pays homage to that culture.

As others have pointed out, Hexley.

> makes it clear why most programmers should stay away from design.

Part of being a good designer is understanding the audience you are designing for. They didn't do that.

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