McCann Worldgroup recently hired Futurebrand (itself) to design a new logo. We’ve been seeing the concept of the dynamic logo for 4 or 5 years now and this seems to be a decent candidate for the treatment but a fairly ho-hum application. Some of the letterforms look sloppy and the materials used seem a bit childish and cartoonish. But it’s much, much better than their old one.

Do we really need to be patronized, however, with the assertion that their company is just too dynamic for a static logo? Please, as if they’re the only company who recruits new talent and goes after new clients. I’m sure the lips of their senior management are stained with just enough Kool Aid to be that credulous. At least with this dynamic new logo they can hire somebody to create better versions of the M and W mark without admitting the first ones were ugly.

So, a few days ago Brand New posted the new Google Chrome logo and discussed it. I’ve since run into a slew of Google Chrome historical madness around the web.

A decent chunk of people legitimately think they ripped off this logo. I doubt it.

But that didn’t stop the ThinkFree Office people from making a shitty Youtube video.

This is the new direction as of Spring 2011.

The whole point of using dimensionality in a user interface is that the Trompe-l’œil literally fools our mind. Every tiny action a user takes when engaging with an interface on a screen is sped up by a fraction of a second. When your day is made up of thousands of actions strung together into a fluid experience the fractions of a second can add up to tangible frustration with no apparent source. I don’t think that should be a prime consideration when designing a logo for the screen, but, it at least places on screen brand marks in a separate category of design criticism. Icons that sit in a dock on your monitor shouldn’t be judged alongside marks intended to extend across a global consumer brands in print, packaging, advertising etc..

This new Google Chrome logo is elegant but doesn’t necessarily take advantage of its position in our hearts and screens.

Bonus trivia, Google’s logo is set in the font Catull, designed by Gustav Jaeger for the Berthold foundry in 1982. Berthold also released Akzidenz Grotesk, the greatest font in the world IMHO.