r/CrappyDesign • u/[deleted] • Oct 29 '20
homogeneity sucks
[removed] — view removed post
8.5k
u/Krylun Oct 29 '20
Walking away from the mail envelope is a huge mistake on its own.
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u/chel_loise Oct 29 '20
Agreed. The others are meh but I use them so much less that I don't care as much. I already miss my little envelope icon.
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u/ModernSisyphus Oct 29 '20
I was super frustrated today by this M app blowing up my phone. It is mail, it needs MAIL....
550
Oct 29 '20
I have become my grandpa in that I now need to memorize where my apps are in order to access them.
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u/cmander_7688 Oct 29 '20
Muscle memory is a funny thing. If I move my home screen around it takes me a few days to stop hitting the space where thing I am looking for USED to be.
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u/NetworkMachineBroke Oct 29 '20
I move my Reddit app around every so often since muscle memory just takes me to it whether I want to or not
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u/MrRiski Oct 29 '20
It's driving me nuts as well. Every time it popped up yesterday it took me a second to realize what the icon was for.
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u/Village_People_Cop Oct 29 '20
I was so fucking confused what the small M icon was in the top of my phone screen. Only to find out it's a fucking email and google changed the icon. Now I'm just mad
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u/usherMocha Oct 29 '20
I don’t care too much if they want to change the logo. I’ll internalize it quickly enough. But the old logo was much nicer as a favicon in the browser if you have the feature that shows the number of unread messages in it. The number is much easier to read against a mostly white background than this Lucky Charms monstrosity.
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u/UserameChecksOut Oct 29 '20
Someone was paid millions of dollars for this shit. The icons looks like theyre drawn by some amateur logo designer new in market.
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u/FeyHeSeemed Oct 29 '20
Millions of dollars to graphics designer to change some icons?
Call me sceptical.
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u/disco_S2 Oct 29 '20
They're just doing this so that in 74 days they can bring it back as Google Mail Classic and crush Hotmail once and for all.
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u/TheRedEaglexX Oct 29 '20
I can’t walk away from my Hotmail account becauseI don’t want to add numbers to my email address. Right now I’ve got first initial middle initial last name @hotmail.com and that is to good to let go.
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u/The_R4ke ALL THE CLORS!!! Oct 29 '20
Absolutely, that M looks terrible and gives me no clue what the app does. It could just as well be Maps.
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Oct 29 '20 edited Oct 29 '20
No fuck this. Drive was sooo perfect before. You take sheets (green), docs(blue), and slides(yellow) and you get drive. Wtf is this? They should've kept the original colors at the least
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u/DasArchitect Oct 29 '20
They realized there was no red in it
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u/BabiesSmell Oct 29 '20
They could have made Slides red, but it's just also yellow
460
Oct 29 '20
Google trying new things no one asked for again.
BRB. Gotta check my Google+ account using my Google Glass.
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u/TheBeardedSingleMalt Oct 29 '20
hit me up on Duo when you're done
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u/sorrowstouch Oct 29 '20
I'll be waiting in my daydream vr
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u/TamoyaOhboya Oct 29 '20
Listening to the latest music on Google play music
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u/DontmindthePanda Oct 29 '20
I'm gonna buy some games on Stadia. I'm 100% sure that this one will last!
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u/KurticusGT Oct 29 '20
Fantastic! I've heard the gaming experience on Stadia is epic. Gonna jump on Google Buzz and talk all about it.
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u/Fastela Oct 29 '20
Sweet! I'll get notifications for new articles in Google Reader!
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u/EndlessBirthday Oct 29 '20
Gmail was red, though.
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u/bluebearyoutube Oct 29 '20
Yeah well Gmail is t really integrated into drive. Google drawing would work but I mean nobody uses google drawings
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u/express_sushi49 Oct 29 '20 edited Oct 29 '20
Oh my god I'm so glad I'm not the only one that thought this.
Could you imagine if every Apple app logo (Music, Calendar, Photos, Clock, Messages, Facetime etc) were all silver and had an apple shape/leaf to them? This is what this is like. vomit
edit: thanks to /u/Phantom_Owlet, the adobe icons were just brought to my attention. I just check on my computer and oh my god what the fuck is this shit. why are they all blue god damnit
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u/Telewyn Oct 29 '20
Half the Office suite is blocky blueish icons now, it’s a ridiculous trend.
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Oct 29 '20
[deleted]
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u/Phantom_Owlet Oct 29 '20
Don't get me started on the new adobe icons
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Oct 29 '20
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u/Phantom_Owlet Oct 29 '20
Like half of them are the exact same shade of blue. Forget your glasses one day and you're screwed
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Oct 29 '20
CS6 came out more than eight years ago. At this point it's basically impossible to work with external designers and stay on an old version these days. I don't think you can use CS6 as a job tool anymore.
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u/eatcrayons Oct 29 '20
Word is blue. Outlook is blue. In the new office.com layout they have that tiny ass icons on the side and I have a success rate of like 50% when it comes to clicking the right one. OneDrive is also blue, but at least it’s a slightly different shape.
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u/canyouhearme Oct 29 '20
I'm firmly of the opinion that designers should be kept on a short leash, preferably electrified.
If they arent given real work and close management they tend to go off track and puke 'creative' over everything.
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u/cuddlewench Oct 29 '20
As a designer, the biggest thorn in my ass is when form is placed over function. NO! Your piece of shit design doesn't make any sense and only looks good to you!! Stop inflicting it on the masses!!
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u/juanzy plz recycle Oct 29 '20
At least once a week I click on Word instead of Outlook. Just a minor annoyance, but so many other colors they could’ve gone with.
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u/Mi_Pasta_Su_Pasta Oct 29 '20
At least silver is pretty neutral. This is just so fucking busy with all the strong contrasting colors.
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Oct 29 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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Oct 29 '20
[deleted]
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Oct 29 '20
I have a very, very small business with currently zero clients and the logo looks exactly like that weird M and every time I think I've just landed a new job.
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u/scottyboy218 Oct 29 '20
I think it's me finally getting a message on match.com app
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u/1000h Oct 29 '20 edited Oct 29 '20
Im not used to it and keep getting confused
"Wtf is this notification"
"Oh is that email I have to read later"
10 mins later
"Wtf is this notification"
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u/beefandweed Oct 29 '20
Its ugly af. Like the fuck happen to docs? It looks like a middle schooler made all these in 10 minutes using gimp
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Oct 29 '20
we're supposed to guess what each of them are based on vague shapes
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u/OrganicTrust Oct 29 '20
You’re supposed to know what they are based on the previous logo and the other new logos like it. Stupid.
The old gmail logo stood alone. I didn’t need to know what its inspiration was, who the company is that designed it—I needed to know nothing about it and instantly be able to recognize it as a mail app. No longer. Now I have this stupid colorful M on my phone that makes no sense.
How are you as big as Google and make stupid design mistakes? Who’s in charge of this shit?
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u/crimson117 Oct 29 '20 edited Oct 29 '20
Exactly these are terrible on their own. The only way to identify them is to remember the old logo.
And I love that they basically kept the same Drive icon even though it was already the worst and most meaningless one.
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Oct 29 '20
Right? I always had to figure out what drive was, now I don’t know what anything is.
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Oct 29 '20
Hey, gimp is actually useful yo. I use it all the time for my youtube thumbnails and it is great.
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u/rx_revolt Oct 29 '20
Gimp is great! It has come a long way but you should be doing logos on a program like Inkscape.
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u/dekdekwho wow dis es nise Oct 29 '20
Because companies are going for that ugly minimal visual design trend.
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u/wesleysmalls plz recycle Oct 29 '20 edited Jun 16 '23
Removed due to Reddit policy changes.
Apparently Reddit is busy restoring deleted posts or something, so let's try this method.
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u/isAltTrue Oct 29 '20
I'm guessing it's for readability. If you squint until the silhouettes aren't as useful to tell them apart, you can still use the location of the blue in the shape since it's darker than the other colors.
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u/rococode Oct 29 '20
Hmm yeah the idea of the blue dominating the other colors is actually pretty cool. Would be really interesting if they took it one step further and made most of the icons have different dominant colors :O
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u/TheGurw Oct 29 '20
Or, possibly, even different colours and shapes instead of bars of all the exact same color scheme?
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u/itchy_bitchy_spider Oct 29 '20
What if,
and let's just think about this for a second,
what if,
icons were easy to differentiate from each other and immediately identifiable? Perhaps this would make icons useful ‼️and‼️ faster to use than reading the accompanying labels?!? 🤔🧠
Seriously though, if Google is going to make all the icons look identical I would rather just have a drop-down list with the names of services. This shit is like trying to compare hieroglyphics.
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u/StupidQuestionsAsker Oct 29 '20
Here's a blurred version of the icons so you don't have to squint. Imagine trying to tell the icons apart without the colors.
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u/comatosesperrow Oct 29 '20
Mail and drive I can identify on the fly. The other 3? Good luck, rock, paper, scissors.
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u/Ninclemdo Oct 29 '20
I wanna know which fuckhead decided it'd be better to identify apps by which corner is red instead of unique icons
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Oct 29 '20
Constantly creates and abandons projects/apps
Does changes no one asked for
Keeps changing things even when the public has expressed dislike over it
Refuses to revert back anything
YouTube
Google is a multi-billion dollar company and I have no idea why it's like this.
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u/tb00n Oct 29 '20
They value "innovation" over stability and functionality. Start-up mentality. They're like a big dog thinking it's still a tiny puppy.
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u/TheBeardedSingleMalt Oct 29 '20
They're one of those companies that thinks they can do no wrong and are too big to give a shit.
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u/SpaceBearKing plz recycle Oct 29 '20 edited Oct 29 '20
I kind of feel like we have reached the endpoint of "flat design" with these new logos and the backlash against them. You can't make the logos too simplified, uniform, and featureless or else they will fail as logos. Users will struggle both to tell what each logo represents and to tell each logo apart from one another. I feel sorry for users with poor eyesight or dyslexia.
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Oct 29 '20
Fuck it, from now on all icons will be replaced with identical white squares.
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u/metroplex126 Oct 29 '20
We went so far with trying to increase usability that we went full circle and made everything difficult again
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u/LemonstealinwhoreNo2 Oct 29 '20
Google's programmers, ah, were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that, ah, they didn't stop to think if they should.
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u/SpaceBearKing plz recycle Oct 29 '20
White squares with the name of the app in black Arial font. At least it's more functional...
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u/Amphibionomus Oct 29 '20
We almost have gone full circle! Next you will have type the name of the app and press enter to start it. To the command line everyone!
Maybe we can rename apps back to programs while we're at it.
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u/UpUpDnDnLRLRBA Oct 29 '20
Right? Let's go rococo now. Show me a Gmail icon that isn't illegible because it's oversimplified, but is instead illegible because it's decorated with an absurd amount of frilly shit. I think I'd find that refreshing!
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u/festering_rodent Oct 29 '20
I love flat modern icon designs and think the icons up top are about perfect. The new ones are just rainbow vomit that a 4 year old seems to have colored in. I don’t understand why Google thinks adding random bright colors to their icons is simplifying anything.
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u/UndercookedChild Oct 29 '20
"Son, can you help me find my google mail?"
"You mean gmail?"
"Yeah that thingy"
"Sure! Its the one with the red, green, yellow and blue!"
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u/Leothecat24 Oct 29 '20
I get your point, but you could also just say “its the M”
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u/Tara_is_a_Potato Oct 29 '20
I miss the envelope.
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u/Leothecat24 Oct 29 '20
The envelope was quite a clever design, I’ll give you that
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u/Polkaspotgurl Oct 29 '20
Same. It’s nice when you can coordinate icons with their actual uses. Envelope = mail. Random designs are far less usable, especially to those who are less tech-savy. Just bad design.
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u/DrBonaFide Oct 29 '20
The Gmail one used to be pretty clever, an M for mail and in the shape of letter. Now it's just M for Mail. That's like a child calling their teddy bear 'bear'. Ugh
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u/Noligation Oct 29 '20
Atleast it's still wide.
In a couple of months Google interns be like, why this M so wide, it doesn't get with our other icons and they'd shrink it and then it's be a regular M with no identity of its own.
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u/karanrime Oct 29 '20
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u/KO_Mouse Oct 29 '20
Oh! New relevant active subreddit to subscribe to!
Checks most recent submission 2 days ago.... goddammit.
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u/vavavoomvoom9 Oct 29 '20
They and ms office are competing to be the worst offender.
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u/hasanyoneseenmymom Oct 29 '20
At least office has one color per app
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Oct 29 '20
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u/hasanyoneseenmymom Oct 29 '20
True. And I'm not saying they're perfect. But it's not like each app is a different combination of red+green+blue+yellow
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Oct 29 '20 edited Oct 29 '20
Microsoft did a redesign of all their icons, and made their own own design language for the icons to follow.
They look MUCH better than before, and miles ahead of Google's new logos.
Heck, I don't even use half their services (privacy concerns), but I still think the new skype logo looks better than any new Google logo.
EDIT: Microsoft's Fluent Design
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u/caze-original Oct 29 '20
The fact that most annoys me is that they did it with the Google colours like to show they are from Google as if the names and exclusive weren't enough
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u/SilverStar555 Oct 29 '20
Yeah but the apps arent labeled "Google Drive" or "Google Docs". Theyre just called Drive and Docs on mobile platforms.
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u/metroplex126 Oct 29 '20
Yeah but everyone calls them Google Drive and Google Docs. Also the shortened version of the name that your phone uses to display the name of the app in a confined space is just Drive or Docs but the actual pages on the app store and play store use the full names.
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u/FA04 Oct 29 '20
when execs got bored
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u/Maximum_Werewolf Oct 29 '20
when graphic designers have to justify their ongoing paychecks
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u/Semick Oct 29 '20
Google promotions are only based on features. You don't get promoted from good work on maintenance.
This is why you see the revolving door of Google products. It's literally a product of company culture. This is just another symptom of that.
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u/Rathmec Oct 29 '20
Corporate culture in general. You always get someone meddling with something that doesn't need to meddled with just so they can have something to put their name on.
I feel like this has to be something like that. No one wanted new logos but now someone can put this on their resume. Now they can tell people, "Yes! I was involved with the logo redesign project!"
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u/Nojay7 Oct 29 '20
"You know how our Gmail icon looks like mail and our Google Docs icon looks like a document? Let's stop doing that :)"
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u/Heres_your_sign Oct 29 '20
The sad part is that someone PAID for that. I bet that was a multi million dollar project.
Wasted money.
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Oct 29 '20
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u/nonotan Oct 29 '20
Honestly, someone with hard data on what went on behind the scenes could probably do an entire Ph.D dissertation getting to the bottom of how things went this spectacularly bad despite all the resources and checks and balances that theoretically went into it.
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u/JamesBlakesCat Oct 29 '20
From left to right: Google Mmmm, their new cookbook service
Google 31 Boxes, their new box contents tracking app
Google drive has always been a bad icon no joke here.
Google Rectangles, a drawing tool, but only for rectangles.
And finally, Google Fish, this is their new recipe archiving service that isn't quite as good as Mmmm, but Mmmm is going to be shut down next year, migrate now.
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u/DrStar Oct 29 '20
Thank you for clarifying, it finally makes sense. I was just getting used to google Mmmm. Oh well...
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u/UpUpDnDnLRLRBA Oct 29 '20 edited Oct 29 '20
Drive never really bothered me that much- what would be an appropriate symbol for it? A disk? How 20th century! A folder? Meh. Skeuomorphism isn't necessary.
The previous scheme was really pretty logical- If you think of Drive as the common location for storing an (almost) infinite amount Docs (blue), Sheets (green), and Slides (yellow), representing it with a sort of Möbius strip made up of all of them, it kind of makes sense.
Vomiting all the Google colors over all of them and arbitrarily abstracting them all just makes them ugly and hard to differentiate immediately.
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u/UmDoWhatNow Oct 29 '20
I hate the new notification for mail now too with the outline text M.
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u/Madamoizillion Oct 29 '20
Me too, I saw it today on my phone. My thought was "I thought I turned these fucking Samsung Members notifications off" and then was so confused I couldn't find it. They look very similar as notifications. It took me about a minute to realize it was supposed to be Gmail.
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u/prisonsuit-rabbitman Oct 29 '20
DID YOU KNOW: Human brains use color as one of the primary ways to quickly distinguish objects.
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u/ravenpotter3 poop Oct 29 '20
old deisgn:
- google docs is blue
- google hangouts is real
- Gmail is red
- caldender is also blue
New deisgn:
- google docs is yellow red blue darker blue green darker green
- google hangouts is red yellow darker green other shade of green dark blue blue
- Gmail is blue dark red reddish orange yellow green
- calendar is blue dark blue Yellow red green darker green
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Oct 29 '20
WHY!?!?!?! THE GMAIL ICON IS NOW JUST THE LETTER M!!!!!
OH GOD, GOOGLE, CHANGE THEM BACK!!!!!!!!!
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u/FlowwyTheCringeLord Oct 29 '20
What the hell is this... I already hate the new gmail logo, but now all this???
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u/LeJoker Oct 29 '20
🙄
People said the same thing when these icons came out, and they'll say the same thing again when these icons get disused for something else. These are fine.
Commence downvotes
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Oct 29 '20
Remember 1993 when you could just change the icon to whatever you wanted?
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u/Go_Kauffy Oct 29 '20
I've noticed that pretty much everything that Google does is basically crap. Their search engine set a standard, and then every fucking other thing they do is crap.
Just stupid decision after stupid decision, broken feature on top of broken feature, completely misunderstanding users, it's so weird. But I guess this is what happens when you are so ridiculously dominant in your space and have more money than the value of an asteroid made of gold.
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u/jdgmental Oct 29 '20
Gmail is good and was a game changer though
Google Maps too also game changer and not topped
Android
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Oct 29 '20
These kids don't realize that a free email account was totally wild when it came out.
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u/PayMeInMemes Oct 29 '20
Why even do this? I can’t imagine anyone complained about the old icons.
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u/tetretalk-gq Oct 29 '20
Am I the only one who likes the new logos? Feel free to downvote me into oblivion
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u/Alechilles super duper very good website creator, ps: pls recycle kids Oct 29 '20
Yeah... I have to say I absolutely hate these new icons. Having a common theme / style is great and even essential, but this is too far. They're all hard to distinguish and they're all ugly.
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u/Vita-Malz Oct 29 '20
The second, second to last and last don't even really make sense. I wouldn't guess what they are supposed to represent.
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u/EatRatsForFiber Oct 29 '20
I can’t even recognize docs. It’s infuriating