Hot on the heels of Google reorganization as Alphabet -- a family of companies with a leaner, more focused new Google at its core -- the maker of the world's most used internet search and mobile operating system has undergone a major rebranding. The push swaps out the previous icon and corporate logo for new minimalist successors. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the story is my discovery that Google's new work is actually not so new! Read on to find out what I mean...
Here's Google's new icon:
An interesting fact I haven't seen widely reported is that Google's new logo actually substantially similar to / is derived from a fan-made design created by Turbomilk-affiliated Russian designer Denis Kortunov several years ago. Back in 2008 Kortunov -- a vocal critic of Google's mid-2008 icon refresh -- was among a handful of designers to try their hand at a reimagining of Google's icon. The results were posted to Turbomilk. It is immediately apparent that the logo above -- Google's new design -- is a only minimally tweaked derivative of Kortunov's second cut. Interestingly the page for this session has disappeared (perhaps at Google's request), but it's still available in the Wayback Machine.
Part of the reason this may have been overlooked was that it was Kortunov's final cut slight more skeuomorphic third attempt at the icon that was more widely publicized...
.... but it was his abandoned second cut that best resonated with today's minimalist design atmosphere. And apparently it resonated with the designers at Google, as well.
For now that's all the information I have, but I've followed up with Kortunov and hopefully will have some sort of update shortly.
