Redesigning the Windows Logo | Hacker News Reader

Redesigning the Windows Logo

windowsteamblog.com

174 pointsllambda141 comments

I've actually grown to like the monochrome treatment of the Windows 7 logo: http://www.seeklogo.com/images/W/windows-logo-C2E55C2526-see...

It looks quite nice on the back of monitor screens, for example.

The extreme fake parallax in the new logo just ends up making it look unbalanced to me, like it's about to fall off my screen. I understand if they want to go all "Swiss" on the next logo...but if so, they shouldn't have had any parallax at all. When I see it, I don't think "Metro", and I don't think "Windows", I just think...apartment building.

Also, see commentary on Brand New: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/with_win...

Yeah, they're going somewhere nice with it but it's just not there yet. It actually looks like the logo hates its font and is turning away from it. It's not an iconic symbol by itself and is too plain, boring, and generic to become one later on. If they decide to use it I'm sure it'll stick eventually, it's just right now, it doesn't look done.

Surely that new logo is meant to be animated...

It's the first Windows operating system designed for tablet computing which is largely portrait mode, and it's the first flag logo with panes wider than tall. I wonder if that was intentional.

I've never seen the original Windows 1.0 logo before (or maybe it's just been so long that I've forgotten), but I actually think that's far and away the best logo they've ever had.

i agree. i've never seen that one before. in fact, they should take the font-style from the new logo and add the old window icon from 1.0, maybe adjust the blue in "windows" in the new logo to match 1.0 as well..

Something interesting to me is how the Windows 1 logo looks like the old ethernet 10base2 icon. A bit ahead of its time, in that sense --I don't think windows 1 was networkable.

Interestingly that logo accurately represents the way "Windows" worked in Windows 1.0. It didn't have overlapping windows. So the lines within the windows represent the dividers of the UI between the window areas. You could make one window bigger by moving a divider over, making all the windows on the other side of that divider smaller. There was no concept of windows being in front of or behind each other (like there was on the mac from the beginning. Microsoft obviously started on windows late compared to the mac, and was quite behind at the 1.0 release.)

You speak about tiling window managers as if they were already an anachronism in 1985. Yet today, some of us continue to prefer them, and they remain in active development. What good is a window that's partially covered? I either want to completely see it or I want it to be completely hidden from view. The parlor trick of overlapping windows is useless to me.

I constantly use overlapping windows.

If I'm tailing a continuous log, I don't need to see the full text of each line, I just need to see when the pattern changes, which I can get by having the first 10 characters peeking out from behind the left of my active window.

My to-do list is big but really the first three words or so are enough to remind me of what each item is; it's behind and to the left of the tailing log.

Finally, I have a few corners of various other apps I'm using poking out all over the place. It's much easier to switch to the window I want by grabbing a corner than alt-tabbing or any other method.

Fair enough. It's important to have different paradigms for different work styles. You use whatever works best for you. My point was just that tiling WMs were not anachronistic back in '85.

Part of me hopes Windows will rediscover tiling, considering their new-found love for tiles.

In the unlikely event they execute on that I might actually be tempted to try windows again - for the first time in 10 years.

Will this be how Metro works?

Interestingly, it seems that MS will revive the "divider" concept in the Metro UI for Windows 8. Slide the divider to the left, and the left-side app gets narrower. You can even do this with a Metro app on one side of the divider and the entire traditional desktop on the other side.

Yeah, I don't love the type, but when I saw that, I was like, hire THAT guy again.

I like it better than the new one. If they got rid of the rounded corners and added the new type, it would be a pretty good one.

It would also give Microsoft employees something I think they need - a bridge to their former greatness. Microsoft was a very interesting company back then and they may need to be reminded they can still be that company.

I like it too.

Here's a nice SVG version that's a lot clearer than the one in the article:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/17/Windows_1.0_lo...

looks like a SIM card to me :>

Hmmm, I think I've seen it somewhere. Indeed: http://stocklogos.com/topic/past-and-future-famous-logos

Haha that's a fantastic page.

The GAP one is especially funny.

Yeah, but not as good as the 2015 Nokia.

The Microsoft one really isn't all that far off the W8 logo...

Wonderful page, laughed alot. Firefox 2012 logo with meteorite crash and then 2050 with an all water covered globe.

2. It was important that the new logo carries our Metro principle of being “Authentically Digital”. By that, we mean it does not try to emulate faux-industrial design characteristics such as materiality (glass, wood, plastic, etc.)

This is in stark contrast to everything Apple has been doing lately with address books and calendar on iPad trying to look like cartoonish versions of real materials. I prefer "authentically digital"

This logo also ties in with the Metro minimalist look.

Paula asked us a simple question, “your name is Windows. Why are you a flag?”

I have never really asked myself that question as a consumer. I have never felt "confused" that the logo is NOT a window. I have just generally liked Windows, the operating system, and have become fond of the brand after 15 years of use.

This assumes that your logo MUST be a literal representation of your name. I'm curious to know why. Without it, it just seems like an opinion of someone named Paula.

As opposed to an opinion of someone named zaidf?

I've always wondered why it was a flag. I've never liked Windows, and the logo always struck me as creepy, like they're trying to make you choose a side: "Come march under our banner!"

I always interpreted it as a "flying window" (which was also the name of an old screensaver).

I think the question arose from the fact that the old logo looked like it was trying to be both a window and a flag at the same time. The reason for looking like a window was pretty obvious, but the reason for looking like a flag wasn't.

It's a stupid question. Logos aren't depictions. They're icons meant to represent something, not describe it. I never questioned the old logo. I actually liked it a lot more than the sad attempt at modernism they're announcing in this article.

It's disappointing that Microsoft doesn't seem to understand this essential design rule. They should read Paul Rand.

“Should a logo be self-explanatory? It is only by association with a product, a service, a business, or a corporation that a logo takes on any real meaning. It derives its meaning and usefulness from the quality of that which it symbolizes."

The design was by Pentagram, not Microsoft. They are certainly more than familiar with the work Paul Rand…

The new design, or the old?

Your designs can be only as inspired as the pointy-haired boss who approves them.

Whether or not you think a logo should literally depict a name, I think her point was that the logo was originally intended to be a literal window: the Windows 1.0 logo was a picture of on-screen desktop windows, the 1989 version was a physical window, but in 3.1 they hopped the rails to a wavy thing that got steadily more flag-like.

This new version is a step back to the roots of the original design. It's clean, it's clear, and I like it.

It’s a little more than just the opinion of someone named Paula, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Scher

Still, the question by itself is pretty dumb/meaningless.

It's like asking a band why all their album covers aren't them playing instruments.

Seems I read a design article once that claimed the /best/ thing you could have for a logo was an abstract shape that consumers identified with your brand, like the Nike swoop. It's fairly unique, identifiable, and unlikely to be confused with anything else. Seems the old windows logo was that, the new one is not.

Not yet.

Microsoft makes the fatal error here of listening to what customers say and not what they are saying.

They do this all the time and it's why their products tend to be train-wrecks, design by committee, functions by consensus, with little personality and zero fit and finish.

This logo is an abomination. It is the kind of thing a first year design student would come up with after a weekend bender and their assignment is due first thing Monday morning. It's a failing grade.

Microsoft has invested a lot in that "flag" and people know what it means because they've seen it glued to cash registers, ATMs, their notebook computers and desktops for more than ten years. It's iconic now.

To throw that out arbitrarily is reckless. Couldn't they hire a design firm with some credibility to adjust it, give it a bit more polish, take it in a slightly new direction, without trying to literally make it a window? It already says "Windows" so why repeat yourself?

I hope someone from the Metro team goes over to whomever did this and duct tapes them to a chair and forces them to hand-write an apology note in perfect Comic Sans.

The mark was done by Pentagram (http://www.pentagram.com/), one of the top design firms IN THE WORLD. I don't know how you'd plan on giving the "flag" more "polish"... Making brand marks is a LOT harder than you make it out to be. I'm not a fan of the bright blue variant but I think the mark it does a great job matching the Metro aesthetic and will be old news by the time windows 9 comes out anyway.

OT, but wow, is it me or is nearly everything in their portfolio _terrible_. 95% of that junk wouldn't make it past the first cut on a 99 designs contest.

Really? Can you point out an example of what you mean? As a design student I sometimes feel that there is a major "design disconnect" because people appreciate/gravitate towards a particular style. Designers do it too, but out of my own curiosity I'm wondering if that is happening here.

You're right. This is some serious hack-ass stuff. I had no idea a firm that huge could consistently crank out such sub-standard junk.

Very few of these show any sort of polish. Maybe it's an ironic thing to look less refined.

Maybe their intentions were good but the final result is terrible.

Just bring back the old WindowsPhone7 icon dammit!

Maybe years from now they'll get really specific and put the molecular formula of glass in the logo.

Let's put tons of effort in to make a clean, simple, beautiful logo. And then let our lawyers stamp a honking (TM) on it to ruin it.

It annoys me too. Is there anyone here who knows if they are required to put it there to protect their brand, or if it's entirely optional?

There are some legal advantages, but it's largely optional. Note, for example, that Apple doesn't use it anywhere other than their written materials.

That's Microsoft for you.

"By that, we mean it does not try to emulate faux-industrial design characteristics such as materiality (glass, wood, plastic, etc.)."

Is "materiality" code for "skeumorphism"? Either way, it's a big middle finger to Apple.

It is. But you have it backwards. Skeumorphism is the code. He simply used words that people might actually understand, you know.

Good, this echo chamber can be annoying.

One noticeable thing, tho not jarring, is how the window panels have vanishing points but the bars (cross) do not.

Oh boy I hadn't noticed that but now that you point it out... I hope they don't change it so I can point it out to people

It's probably a way to ensure the smallest incarnations don't bleed together. If bars also had vanishing points, the smallest incarnation would be defined by the narrowest part of the bar, this way the width of the bar is the unit.

One thing that also plagued my Compiz logo is that horizontally asymmetric designs can look like they're about to tip over. The new Windows logo definitely feels like leaning towards left to me. I tried to solve it by adding the third dimension, but I think the answer is more vertical asymmetry.. A real perspective.

Ever since Windows 3.1, I viewed the faux 3D window decorations as an insulting waste of my processing time. The Windows logo was merely an extrapolation of MS's attitude that "Now that we have such powerful computers, we can merrily waste all that power with this increasingly bloated but supposedly impressive OS."

That attitude was not unique to them, at all. Apple has been equally guilty of it for longer than Microsoft. It's that attitude that (in part) led me to move to Linux a decade ago, where I could merrily work without suffering the overhead of a GUI.

This new Windows logo is, in my view, the sexiest thing I've ever seen come out of Microsoft. I stopped caring about Windows long ago, except to note that minwin sounded awesome (but never shipped?), Windows 8 Server could run headless (What an innovation!), and PowerShell actually does seem brilliantly innovative (although it's unfortunately integrated with all that .net crap).

Now if this logo accurately reflects their change in attitude, to a minimal OS that stays out of my way, then I've got to say I'm a fan. They're unlikely to win me over from Arch Linux, but for once Microsoft seems to be on the right track. At least with respect to that logo.

Edit: I'm amazed that this post is bouncing between 0 and 1 points. In a discussion of the new Windows logo, I described why I like it so much. If you disagree, feel free to comment. Down-votes should not be used to express disagreement.

Minwin didn't ship on its own, but was really an artifact of their efforts to make the components in the kernel less dependent on each other, while developing Windows Vista. I'm not sure how successful their efforts were, seeing as even "Server Core", supposedly the most minimal Windows Server edition possible, still mandates a GUI.

I recall reading an article which talked about the kernel team assigning level numbers to every kernel component, giving the GUI a high level processor scheduling and such a low level, and trying to reduce the dependency between the different levels. Minwin was merely a Windows kernel that has none of the higher level components, but the problem with it is that they didn't manage to completely modularize the kernel so that if you would add some new components they would require a slew of other components.

Still, they've managed to make Internet Explorer optional, but I'm not sure what other benefits the modularization of Windows Vista's kernel has brought.

As far as I know minwin was completely successful, just also completely misunderstood.

Minwin was always just the name of their kernel refactoring project, it was never supposed to be shipped as a separate product.

I'm upvoting just for your edit, as I think disagreement via downvotes is a bit childish and all too common.

Having said that, I doubt Microsoft is moving in a direction an Arch Linux user would call "minimalist".

Thanks, icarus_drowning. Having reread my post a day later, I realize that it could have been a lot better written. I suspect you're right, just based on MS history, but that logo certainly looks like a fresh mentality. It's simpler than the Arch logo, fwiw.

Funny, that's exactly what Duarte said about Ice Cream Sandwich. I'll be honest, I kinda make the same scrunched up face when I see iOS screenshots as I do when I see a high gloss platicky KDE screenshot.

Hey there, Shetland Islands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetland_Islands

IT'S NOT A FLAG

What makes the new Windows logo appear so weirdly revolting to me is the fact that it is minimalist, but not distinctive. Contrast this to the simplified Apple logo that one sees upon booting OS X-- minimalist, but entirely distinctive.

The new Windows logo is a weirdly parallaxed set of rectangles. Nothing specifically diacritical at all.

EDIT: I think this is why the monochrome Win7 logo that has been posted here is better. It is distinctly Windows, building on decades of brand identity, and a truly unique and iconic. It is almost as if the "flag" shape that Microsoft seems so eager to drop is perhaps their greatest asset.

They've missed the point: minimalism for the sake of minimalism isn't "better". Simple is simple. Beautiful is beautiful.

"Your name is Windows. Why are you a flag?"

I wonder how much they paid to listen to an expert ask that question when it was likely asked, and ignored, internally for years.

not really a flag... i guess they look at something like this for "window"

http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs15/f/2007/113/9/d/Old_Window_by...

That window is not flapping in the wind like the Windows logo.

It was a flag.

I guess it's supposed to connote triumphalism. As in "yay, it finally shipped!" The NetBSD logo, itself based on a cartoon of daemons hoisting a flag like at Iwo Jima, has many of the same connotations.

Back in Windows 3.1, by going to ProgMan's About box and Ctrl-Shift-Clicking the Windows logo X amount of times, you could trigger an "easter egg", one screen of which was a flag waving with the Windows logo on it. Another of which was a credits scroll with a cartoon figure that had one of four faces: Gates, Ballmer, the Windows dev lead at the time (I forget who but he had a beard); and a creepy looking teddy bear (some sort of internal mascot for the Windows division).

Good times.

Politically, big companies often need outside experts to come in and tell them what many employees already know: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/01/why-so-much-consulting...

> We have evolved from a world of rudimentary low resolution graphics to today’s rich high-resolution systems

...but we still haven't learned to not save single-colored pictures as jpeg. Aaa my eyes!

I actually like the Windows 1.0 logo...

The Pentagram blog also has a writeup on the new logo:

http://pentagram.com/en/new/2012/02/new-work-microsoft.php

including a nifty animated logo

I really like the video as it actually gives some "context" to the window and its relation to the text. I just wish this view was more transparent in the static version.

And here's Apple's rendition of the Windows logo (used for Boot Camp): http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanchao/127292839/

I think they should have retained the distinctive red/green/blue/yellow colors of the Windows logo. And skipped the parallax.

The Metro look has lots of flat, colorful squares that are just crying out to become a Windows logo. See this Windows 8 screenshot, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_8_Developer_Previ...

Agreed -- it would have been to metro what the windows 1.0 logo was to it's tiled windows. If the colours were deemed too garish, then perhaps varying lightness of one colour.

Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely reimagine" their OS every time they iterate? We're talking about an OS, not a video game. I get that they're trying to innovate, but it comes across as self-deprecating.

I love how Apple has maintained uniformity in their UI across the past few iterations of OSX. It's just one less thing to worry about relearning, allowing me to get my work done easier.

They seem to do it in a very odd way as well. They might change "completely reimagine" but they don't change there decade plus old network, and other, dialogs to improve usability.

Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely reimagine" their OS every time they iterate?

They don't, though. Vista was, cosmetically, a big leap from XP, but in terms of actual UI it barely changed at all. Start button is still in the same place, maximise, minimise, etc. All still there.

I do really appreciate the little touches MS add, actually. Drag a window to the top of the screen to maximise, to the left to use 50% of the screen, shake the window to minimise all the other ones... I use that stuff every day, and miss it when I go home to OS X.

I use better touch tool to do pretty much exactly that on OSX (along with multitouch gestures) http://blog.boastr.net/

Perhaps they are dealing with a public perception that they are 'old sauce' which is to say "Oh my grandparents used Windows, I use <something else>." Technology has its fashion moments and this is one of them. When you elevate the OS to the level of 'brand' you enter into a world where fashion as well as features dictate acceptance. So in that world, they need to have a fashion statement as well as a technology statement.

That being said, its also easy to get stuck in a rut and have that kill your project. Microsoft has perhaps more scars than many in this area. If you recall they did a 'tablet' version of Windows long before iOS, but they failed to 're-imagine' and instead they tried to 'shoehorn' ideas which didn't make sense (we'll assume you have a high precision pointing device like a stylus or mouse) and so those preconceptions prevented them from seeing what needed to be done.

Mostly I think the messaging about the flag and what not is PR to try to tell people "Hey, we're awake and we're trying to innovate, and we want to be better, and we're sorry for Vista." If their stock price is any indication they are having some success there.

Well in XP Tablet Edition, people with touch screens did have a high precision pointing device. Capacitive screens were uncommon with end users at that time, and almost unheard of (completely unheard of?) in laptops. I don't know if Vista had a tablet edition, but in Windows 7 it's pretty easy to get around the basic OS with a finger. The only real difficulty comes in with third party apps that do not follow finger-friendly design concepts.

Even for Windows 7 checkboxes, I've seen capacitive screen drivers/software that allow for some "fuzzing", where if you hit somewhere around the checkbox/button, it gets checked.

Huh what? The UI has been pretty much the same since Windows 95. Meanwhile OS X changed the scrolling, and lost scrollbars and a whole bunch of other changes in Lion that people aren't very fond of.

The public seems to have gotten along very well with the Windows 7 UI over XP without much, if any re-learning.

Vista was different because it actually changed the security and driver model, breaking a lot of hardware and software. I haven't seen too many complaints about the actual UI.

By "everytime they iterate", you mean Windows 3.1 to Windows 95(very well received) and Windows 7 to Windows 8(desktop mode is exactly the same) which is what, twice in 20 years? Maybe thrice if you count the taskbar changes in Windows 7.

Vista's UI is terrible but it wasn't until Windows 7 that I figured out why: Vista is the half-complete transition from the XP UI to the 7 UI. As such, it's got loads of issues and inconsistencies.

I know the moving control panel, network properties etc. led to a lot of annoyances, but in terms of the actual window handling, taskbar, start menu, how was it terrible?

The search box on the start menu was itself a huge leap over XP. That was the single big thing I missed in XP.

Far enough, anything unchanged from XP isn't terrible. And the start menu search box is a big improvement even if the rest of the start menu seems worse.

Microsoft Windows's primary competitor is... Windows. Not OS X. It isn't easy to convince regular users to use the new Windows, or to do an in-place upgrade (which is hundreds of dollars, unlike OS X, and also a terrible idea usually, also unlike OS X).

Apple is simply pushier, dropping support for old versions almost immediately. They also release more often, and I would say that over the same span of time their change drastic-ness is similar (intel, cocoa, app store, etc). I wouldn't be surprised if 10.9 vs 10.5 is as drastic as Windows 8 to Vista, for instance.

> Could someone explain what motivates Microsoft to try and "completely reimagine" their OS every time they iterate?

Raymond Chen posted some reasoning for this on his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/05/25/14125...

If they don't change anything visually then nobody thinks anything has changed under the hood.

Directors, Managers, Employee, they want to proof they were doing something.......so this is the only way... :)

This is great. Not the logo itself, that's just... Something. But it's a very good idea for the clean break from previous Windows logos which were getting more and more complex. And now if you see any of those colorful logos, you will think "oh, that's old", so it's a subtle push to upgrade. Unlike Vista which was like, "oh that's the same old OS wrapped in a fake Apple-like shell."

I think the metro UI is genuinely interesting and (dare I say it) exciting. The logo redesign fits with our times - but it's incredibly safe .. verging on dull.

Large corporations have so much ubiquity .. we encounter them so many times throughout our day. Daily exposure ensures familiarity and this familiarity eventually leads to acceptance; in one sense the logo could be virtually anything and would still serve its purpose (e.g. Pepsi redesign).

The age of the logo is over in my opinion .. these days the prominance of a logo has been supplanted by a fuzzier, more Machiavellian concept - the ability for a brand to connect with its audience on a personal level. In that respect a logo is sometimes simply fodder to for the latter; ensuring the brand and company are spoken about socially (e.g. the gap redesign / 2012 olympics).

It pains me to imagine how much Pentagram were paid for this.

trademark symbol really ruins it for me. Windows 1.0 is much better for that reason alone.

This is far better: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36724189@N05/6892887709/in/phot...

OOo an opening window. I like it. That's re-imagination right there.

Yeah! Let's use the flag of Shetland so ... people won't confuse our logo with .. a flag?

Um?

Granted they didn't pick the flag of big country like Sweden or anything, and if Shetland, Calais and Pärnu, Estonia, as well as Iceland in the past, were already using it, why couldn't Microsoft?

On a more serious note, there's lots of valid criticism on this logo, the TM and (R) are clutter, their "Metro style" is not supposed to have perspective, and the font isn't particularly anything either.

But then, it's not my logo :)

Not to mention the dot on the i looks misplaced and misshapen.

My first emotional reaction to that logo was 'ewwww'. It's not a good sign when the best word I can find to describe it is gross.

Other than the color, it's a decent new logo.

There is, however, one huge flaw: separated from the wordmark, the icon is flaccid. It looks like they were aiming for Apple-like minimalism in both color and form (which isn't to say that Apple is the only company allowed to practice minimalism), but "a skewed, doubly-bisected square" simply isn't distinctive enough to be iconic. I really hope they iterate on it for Windows 9.

In the nicest possible way, I'm actually bored of this metro look already and it's not even released yet.

I find that logo boring, some squares with a warp on it. I know it doesn't have to be over complicated but I don't think there is any imagination there at all.

The blue is not very strong either, the branding it quite weak.

Just my opinion, which I am entitled to before anyone starts giving me grief!

Boring can be good, from a usability perspective. Metro seems to be their big selling point now and I imagine they want the branding to reflect the usability of the product.

Not trying to give you grief. I agree it's kinda boring, I'm just thinking that maybe it's boring by design.

I think I know what they are trying to achieve, they are hoping to get the Apple simplicity, I think.

I didn't think you were giving grief, sounded like constructive criticism, I don't mind that. I just don't like mindless comments that are biased.

I hope this product gets them back in the game, they been a bit behind in innovation lately so I'm looking forward to something radically different.

Somebody famous once said something along the line of "Art gets more beautiful with age. Fashion gets uglier"

I really like metro as an idea but in practice it feels like fashion.

Using bold flat colors and clean lines and shapes, the new logo has the characteristics of way-finding design systems seen in airports and subways.

Bold colors? As in plural colors? That's the first place they've failed. And trying to emulate an airport's system for moving people around is bad from the outset - those things are meant to be simple and boring. They do their task by being unambiguous, uniform, simple... and bland.

Sure, make your logo work in monochrome for places where it has to be (like the plastic moulding mentioned above), but in both print and digital, a single flat pale blue is pretty tepid. It also doesn't evoke the multitude of colour panes that they're trying to push in every screenshot - why not simply move their four colours to the new 'window'?

Well, really, why shouldn't an operating system be "simple" and "boring" and "bland"? I don't need an exciting OS -- it needs to be dependable.

It doesn't matter how simple, boring, bland and dependable your product is, your logo should not be bland, especially if you're marketing to the general public.

If it didn't say "Windows 8" next to it, I wouldn't have known that it was the Windows logo.

Frankly, it is kind of a let-down. The Vista & Windows 7 "pearl" logo is cool - it is flashy and is artistically impressive with it's lighting effects on the rounded semi-reflective surface. It draws the eye to itself. The new logo is a bland blue monochrome square whose slight tilt causes the eye to passively move right over it without notice.

Is this the first hint that Windows 8 is an operating system to "pass" on instead of adopting?

If Microsoft wants this operating system to grab market share, a bland Germanic logo that tells the user "don't mind me, but your next exit is in half a mile" is a poor first step at grabbing the market's attention, IMO.

Really? I bought the shiny blue liquid vista pearl looked a lot like a poor, and very self conscious, attempt to imitate their competitors.

I'm curious to see when/if they update the Windows key on laptops and keyboards.

I think they won't mind leaving it the way it is for some time. It could be used as a sort of a subconscious metaphor: keyboards/old logo is the thing of the past and touch screen/new logo is "the now".

Microsoft's main failure for the past decade or so is that they have repeatedly enacted a flurry of short-term strategies in reaction to whichever direction the industry winds happened to blowing, and did so for just about every consumer tech industry.

Xbox to Playstation, Bing to Google, Zune to iPod. In the process they did very little leading along the way and hemorrhaged money from all of these businesses.

I still like and respect Microsoft as a company and think they can still produce great things, and I hope that the next decade sees them develop some leadership and return to innovation.

Heh, the phrase "Authentically Digital" neatly sums up what I like about the Metro UI. If Windows Phone wasn't so locked down, I would get one just because it's the best looking option by far right now.

As for the logo, I think a flag shape would be better than the window shape they have. It feels a little bit generic and almost self-parodying. That said, I definitely see where they are coming from, and it does fit in with their new Metro UI aesthetic.

It's rough times when a rectangle split into four is newsworthy and people suddenly realize they prefer something that was designed in 1985.

The article and shape reminded me of the logo I did for Compiz before they merged back with Beryl: http://forum.compiz.org/viewtopic.php?f=135&t=236&p=...

It's by no means a perfect philosophy and account, but designers might enjoy the story.

Now it really looks like the Swedish flag.

Does the kerning in the new logo look wrong to anyone else? That 'o' has an awful lot of space around it.

The kerning immediately irked me, too, but I was thinking the 'W' and 'i' were too close.

The way the W sort of points at the dot in the i makes me feel like if someone is poking my eye.

I think its the dot on the 'i'. It should be square too.

Is it really legal to Trademark such an image? There must be a thousand prior iterations of such a thing.

The trademark probably involves its usage with that brand name.

A thousand prior iterations in the Operating Systems market? Trademarks are specific to markets; that's why UPS can have the color brown but non-shipping-companies can also use brown.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that other people couldn't trademark the same image in different contexts. Trademark really isn't like copyright.

The fierce reduction at the root of Metro's design allowed me to fairly accurately envision the new logo as soon as I read, "It’s a window… not a flag."

One color, simple shapes, simple text - MicroSoft clearly has a design vision.

If I had to picture "windows logo for metro" something more akin to the Black Flag logo comes to mind. Not this disaster that looks like some shareware multi-monitor utility.

Microsoft seems confused, but I am genuinely interested in Windows 8 and Metro. Hopefully they ditch their legacy stuff though and make a clean break a la iOS/OS X

"Microsoft and Windows are all about putting technology in people's hands to empower them to find their own perspectives."

This line could be avoided :)

This gets worse with each iteration.

An ode to friends in Finland? The logo looks very much like flags of Finland, Sweden etc.

Okay, so I've read the comments here and I am the only one who really likes the new logo.

This is the first logo I haven't liked honestly. It looks unbalanced and unfinished.

Sorry, not feeling it. I think the Vista one was the best, to be honest.

I checked the Windows 8 wikipedia page b/c I was curious whether someone had already put this image there and I was astonished to find the page has 74 references! By comparison, the page for the Civil War has 31 references -- 22 of them from the same book.

well, it's well crafted, elegant, and minimalistic. however, deep down I just feel microsoft is far too sophisticated a company to be monochrome.

I'm really not feelin' it. It looks like some sort of industry association sticker that I might see on a window or glass door at Home Depot. I agree with others here, too, that the 3.1 logo seems to be a better example of the clean look they're going for.

As for today, in my opinion, windows 1's logo is such a fashion.

Giving the blog a name that is easily confused with "Window Steam Blog" says a lot about the team's understanding of how to build user-friendly interfaces.

Interesting that they'd choose the Greek flag as the next Windows logo...

It's the flag of Shetland, Calais, a historical flag of Iceland and some place in Estonia, but the Greek flag looks different.

Too much space between "windows 8" and the actual window.

The new logo is an homage to the BSOD

> very short list of agencies that we wanted to work with on the redesign of the logo and were thrilled when Pentagram agreed to join us in the project

Pentagram. Sounds like an appropriate company name to work on the logo redesign.

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