Frank & Michelle's Blog

Do Over

February 12, 2008 · Filed under Entertainment

Every now and then, I watch a scene in a movie or TV show that is so awful that I have to assume it was a one-take deal and the director didn’t know you could have a do-over. As much as I love Star Wars, Mark Hamill’s acting in the “Luke, I Am Your Father” scene is a perfect example of this scenario.

I always assumed the Google logo was one of these cases. I have a lot of admiration for the people at Google, and thus had optimistically imagined a scenario where someone used the free PhotoShop clone GIMP in a 10-second “My First Logo” exercise to get a logo up on their beta site. Then, I imagined, no one got around to updating it before the release, and before anyone knew what had happened, their logo was too recognizable to allow changing it. It’s the only feasible excuse I can come up with for such an awful logo.

As it turns out, though, this is not the case. Apparently, someone actually went through various iterations before arriving at the world’s ugliest logo. I should have known, because that kind of ugly can’t possibly be an accident.

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frank said,

@Paul N:

Hint: it says “powered by Productions“

Posted at 9:58 pm on February 14, 2008 · Permalink

frank said,

@kosh:

And lets all remember the even-worse-but-energy-saving Blackle logo.

Posted at 9:56 pm on February 14, 2008 · Permalink

frank said,

@room34:

Dude. I feel like we showed up at a party wearing the same dress. And that dress had a picture of Dale Earnhardt on it.

And thank you, I should have mentioned this came from Wired.

Posted at 9:54 pm on February 14, 2008 · Permalink

Paul N said,

I’m neutral on the logo, it’s kind of ugly but still pretty distinctive, which is the most important thing for a logo, right?

Frank, what is your vision for their logo? You should post an alternative here.

I like the IBM logo.

Posted at 8:41 pm on February 14, 2008 · Permalink

kosh said,

Hey I agree with you guys on something for a change. I kinda like the all uppercase one as well. At least they didn’t go with a swoosh. Just the name with some color works fine but I’m sure someday they will change it and we can look back and say remember when the Google logo looked like this?

Posted at 9:57 am on February 14, 2008 · Permalink

room34 said,

Hey, I blogged about this too. My feelings exactly. I actually kind of like the one that’s all uppercase, with the crosshairs and the magnifying glass. (The one which, according to the article on Wired [c'mon, give credit where it's due], seems to be the one Google’s founders liked LEAST.)

Then again, I have to remember that my aesthetic doesn’t necessarily match that of a broader target audience. I hate the NASCAR logo too.

Posted at 9:35 am on February 14, 2008 · Permalink

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