For the first time in eight years, Google has changed the logo of its Google Chrome browser and adopted a simpler shape to better match Google’s current brand, the company’s designers said Friday. But you may not notice it.
The logo seems to have brighter colours and a larger blue circle at the centre. Also, the new icon has no shadows like the previous one. Google Chrome’s logo has changed after a gap of 8 years.
The browser was introduced in 2008. Since then, design and basic elements of the logo have remained changed with timely changes in 2011 and 2014.
Chrome designer Elvin Hu detailed out the changes in the browser’s logo in a series of tweets. “Some of you might have noticed a new icon in Chrome’s Canary update today. Yes! we’re refreshing Chrome’s brand icons for the first time in 8 years. The new icons will start to appear across your devices soon,” he wrote in a tweet.
“We simplified the main brand icon by removing the shadows, refining the proportions and brightening the colours, to align with Google’s more modern brand expression,” he further added.
Another change that the company has introduced is the OS-specific customizations for Windows, Mac and iOS devices. For Windows 10 and 11, Chrome’s icon will have a gradated look that fuses with other icons in the taskbar. On macOS, the icon will have a 3D design similar to Apple system apps.
While it uses brighter colours and no extra gradients on ChromeOS, the beta app on iOS will have a blueprint-like icon as a nod to Apple’s developer-focused apps, and the Stable app icon will have new proportions on the tile.
All these changes, Hu said, are being introduced to “align with Google’s more modern brand expression. “You might ask, “why bother with sth. so subtle?” We tailor Chrome’s experience to each OS, with features like Native Window Occlusion on Windows, day-one M1 support on macOS, Widgets on iOS/Android, and Material You on Android. We want our brand to convey the same level of care,” he said.
You might ask, “why bother with sth. so subtle?” We tailor Chrome’s experience to each OS, with features like Native Window Occlusion on Windows, day-one M1 support on macOS, Widgets on iOS/Android, and Material You on Android. We want our brand to convey the same level of care. pic.twitter.com/rB7BvYaZ26
— Elvin 🌈 (@elvin_not_11) February 4, 2022