Google Design

design.google.com · Company blog · on HN since 2015

Google Design is Google's official design site, with posts on its brand identity, Material Design, icons, fonts, and tools.

What HN saysHN links it for Google's design announcements. Commenters disagree on Material, with some praising Android design and one calling its UX a catastrophe.
31HN people shared it
17linked it in comments
14stories submitted
138story points
2 years agolast shared
2015people per year2026

Most-shared posts

  1. 1
    Evolving the Google Identity
    11 people · 46 points · first shared 2015 · 5 comments on HN
  2. 2
    Google Design
    6 people · 2 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
  3. 3
    Design Is Never Done
    3 people · 4 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
  4. 4
    Resizer – Google Design
    2 people · 2 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
  5. 5
  6. 6
    Tooling Up
    1 people · 10 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
  7. 7
    Google Fonts Redesigned
    1 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
  8. 8
    Material Icons
    1 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
  9. 9
  10. 10
    Device Metrics – Google Design
    1 people · 2 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
  11. 11
    Material Design Awards 2016
    1 people · 1 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
  12. 12
    Resources
    1 people · first shared 2016
  13. 13
    Spec
    1 people · first shared 2016

What HN people wrote when they linked it

bko · 2015-11-12
I think Android has surpassed iOS in terms of design and usability. I upgraded to a Android 5.0 recently (lightly modded by One Plus), and the design is really stunning. The icons have been redesigned to appear as though they they are made of actual flat material adding almost a hybrid 3d flat design that looks great. The colors are vibrant without being overwhelming. Messenger and Contacts applies a new color to your contacts which helps you keep in mind with whom you are speaking. All the Google apps exhibit similar colors and styles to add for consistency. I'm not a designer and maybe its just personal preference, but I'm a long time Android user and this is the first time the stock Android has been pleasant to look at. I use other's iPhones and, despite the great display, the UI now appears rather dull in comparison. https://design.google.com/
spaceribs · 2017-01-18
Rebranding, when done correctly, can be a great way to regroup and focus on what's important about your business. You really need to stop looking at it as just a new design, and look at what philosophy it exudes. This constant visual reminder of what the company's mission is resonates downward much better than a mission statement, and how clients/customers interact with you. This is of course if your rebrand was a success, and that's a very very difficult task dependent on all sorts of internal factors, that even the largest companies get wrong (see Gap, Uber, Pepsi). Don't listen to me though: https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-identity/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnv5iKB2hl4
desuvader · 2016-10-26
I actually like the monospaced font. Maybe it's an unpopular view, but it has really grown on me. Here is another one: https://design.google.com/
Artemis2 · 2015-08-19
Material has nice animations and transitions, but is a catastrophe of UX. Just look at [design.google.com](https://design.google.com/).
int_handler · 2016-10-26
The 10-month investigation by the GSA's inspector general found that 52 percent of 18F's work was unbillable and included an internal project to change its logo by altering its font, alignment and background color. In all, 727 staff hours, or $140,104, were spent on developing the brand, including that logo change. It seems that the author is intentionally obfuscating this point and making it seem as if 52% of 18F's work was put towards "making the logos look hipper," which is likely not the case. While "developing the brand" includes logo work, in most cases, that is just a small part of it. Developing a UI design spec, similar to Google's Material Spec [0], would also fall under "developing the brand." Perhaps someone from 18F can speak to whether developing the U.S. Web Design Standards [1] is part of this category because if so, I would argue that spending $140k (which is roughly 1-2 software engineer annual salaries) on such a project is certainly worthwhile since this spec is part of the foundation for many future projects. [0] https://design.google.com/spec [1] https://standards.usa.gov/
kevinstubbs · 2016-12-15
Looks like there are four frameworks[0]. Use the Android one for Android, the Polymer one for Polymer, the Angular one for Angular, and the "Material Design Lite" would have to be adapted for everything else - it is plain css, html. Don't know if the Material Design Lite has any JavaScript library. [0]https://design.google.com/resources/
kearneyandy · 2016-02-23
trevorcreech · 2015-09-04
adevine · 2015-09-04
Clearly, though, this is not how Google did it. For example, their blog post, https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-identity/#googl… , states that the upper case G is not just a circle, but slightly modified to make it more visually appealing.
kps · 2015-09-01
I think the Alphabet logo is based on Product Sans mentioned here https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-identity/ (The lower-case ‘a’ is distinctive.) I wonder whether abc.xyz will switch the body text now that the new Google style is public.
munaf · 2015-09-01
Here's a bit more info on the design process: https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-identity/
kyrra · 2015-09-01
They actually give a reason why they changed it in the blog post. Saying that the old one was designed for desktops and the new one is meant to scale better (for things like watches and phones I'd guess). Edit: to add from their design blog[0], the new logo can be sent to a client in 305 bytes of compressed SVG (vs 14,000 bytes for the old logo). So it helps with lower bandwidth. The design post also mentions scaling of the logo. [0] https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-identity/
vladdanilov · 2015-09-01
I expected more attention to detail for a project this big. They are using the new logos in a few places now. All suffer from various problems. The one on the Google Official Blog (http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/google-update.html) has hinting problems most noticeably on "l" symbol (zoomed version – http://i.imgur.com/1kRZB5o.png). The same with the logo on the Google Translate (https://translate.google.com/) and with the presented Google Logotype on the Google Design blog (https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-identity/, https://g-design.storage.googleapis.com/production/v5/assets/rendition… The black SVG logo at the bottom of the last page has some unkempt figures and a leftover line. On a positive note, the logo image (http://googleblog.blogspot.ru/2015/09/google-update.html) is well optimized with Zopfli (https://github.com/google/zopfli). However, I don't see why the new logo is smaller (from here – https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-identity/). I could bring down the size of the previous one (http://i.imgur.com/lfmoqgP.png) to 8 174 bytes (originally 14 022 bytes) vs 13 804 bytes for the new one. Of course, SVG versions are both much smaller.

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