Microsoft Gets First New Corporate Logo in 25 Years

You have to chuckle.

The symbolic importance of a logo is often more significant than the design itself. Companies frequently use the design to communicate how they are becoming younger, nimbler, more focused on the future than ever. Typeface, color, graphics and styling can convey momentum, vigor, stability, strength - or whatever other attribute marketing strategists believe is essential to renew commitment with established customers while enticing new ones to join the fold.

In the case of Microsoft, we have a once dynamic brand that personified competitive dominance. Which has lately been overshadowed by newer avatars of technological prowess. This would have seemed to have been a great opportunity to remind the world of its historic successes while drawing attention to the brilliance of its newer initiatives.

And, despite its proud history, smart people and notable successes, Microsoft has come in for its share of ribbing, mostly from arch-rival Apple. Their founders, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, are likely to be remembered as the two most memorable and brilliant leaders of the computer/internet era. Their human personality traits, steady for Gates, versus mercurial for Jobs, seemed to capture, however fairly or not, the style of their businesses. And Apple took advantage of that in a series of wickedly pointed ads in which 'PC' came to personify the alleged stodginess of the Microsoft product and service.

So why, one must ask, did Microsoft, with billions in cash on hand and access to the best designers in the world, double down on that salubrious, disrespectful memory by embracing a new logo that, as its signature feature, is square and gray?

Calling Dr. Freud... JL

Tom Cheredar reports in Venture Beat:

Iconic technology giant Microsoft is rolling out a new corporate logo to go along with the company’s line of recently released or forthcoming major product updates — the first time its done so in 25 years.
The new logo (on top of the image above) preserves the classic four-color “window,” but ditches the dated wavy shape in favor of a simple four-square box devoid of any shading. The company also decided to change the italicized jet black font to a regular sans-serif grey typeface.

Microsoft also released a YouTube video about the logo change, which we’ve embedded below. The video features several of its other brands, (Office, Windows, and Xbox), each represented under a single color found in the main Microsoft window-box icon (except yellow).

While I like the fact that Microsoft didn’t go for something drastically different (for the sake of being different) with its new logo, I can’t help but think the company really missed a great opportunity to rebrand itself into something truly fresh. For example, L.A. art student Andrew Kim created Microsoft rebranding concept last month that ties in most of the products under a new simplistic logo. No matter what you think of Kim’s work, at least it made a statement.