Memes

It's not even more aesthetic. Just more unified in branding.

i think they did need to unify the design and branding but i also agree they went too far with it. if they had only chosen 1-2 colors for each app icon that would have helped a lot.

gmail - red

drive - yellow

maps - green

meet - blue

calendar - lighter blue

problem solved

I wouldn't even call this "aesthetics". Rather "conceptual homogeneity" or something like that. It's what happens when you strive for a uniform look over a useful or visually pleasing one.

The homogenization of these icons has been a long source of consternation for me.

They're barely functional as icons; you can scroll right by them and miss them; which makes finding the apps in a list of apps a bit annoying sometimes. Removing each icon's unique color scheme and replacing it with the 'company 4 colors' was the stupidest fucking idea ever.

Even more infuriating is how they keep renaming the applications to unexpected things every so often; so they move around; and it's dreadfully annoying to remember if they prefixed the name of the app with a G or something else completely different, which renders strict alphabetical sorting a bit moot.

I keep all my Google icons quarantined in one folder. Case in point:

Plus the art they started using in gdrive. The art on its own is cool but within the Google ecosystem just feels like… what is it even… why… ugh I hate it.

Triumph of visual design over interactive design. These days, most “designers” only care about graphics visually. The much deeper science of how people use and understand things is beyond them. Worse, they think the problem is that everybody else does not “get” visual design.

Style over substance.

[It could be sooo easy to solve, but noooo...

People simultaneously justifying their jobs but not willing to make significant, meaningful changes

Since Gmail doesn't have the obvoious envelope anymore I often open it when I want to open Maps. My brain ist like "M for Maps".

I actually think these are fine. If I can quickly recognise each on my homescreen (I don't use labels) then it's fine, and I've never had a problem with any of these.

I like it because each company each has its own set of apps, and they have somewhat unified app icons.

Proton is the same, which similar icons as google but with their own unified branding.

I like it, personally.

Not Google related, but whoever decide that the best color scheme for an Office suite should be light grey text on a white background deserves to be flogged.

What would happen if people deserted Google products in droves?

Mail:

• Vivaldi mail
• Android client: K-9 Mail
• Desktop client: Betterbird

Cloud:

• Mega [referral URL]

Maps:

• Organic Maps

Meet:

• Matrix

Calendar:

• Vivaldi calendar, syncable with a myriad of clients.

Here's an exhaustive list of Mostly excellent “free” software that I use.

Please also consider supporting the myriad of developers who offer their superior products for free, open source, without ads.

“What if I paid for all my free software?
I've always felt guilty by taking for granted the rare breed of virtuous humans that provide free excellent software without relying on advertising. Let's change that and pay, how much would I “lose” anyway?” —https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/takemymoney.html

Anyone else this there's actually nothing at all wrong with the "New" row of icons? Except for the triangle one, which is terrible in its "Original" version as well, as it indicates absolutely nothing about its app (I believe it's Google Drive, right?). All the rest are clearly distinguishable, and have relevance to what the app does.

What I see:

💩 💩 💩 💩 💩

I filed a very irritated Radar / Feedback (Apple's terms for bug reports) with Apple when the icons for apps all turned to rounded squares. I compared them to Google's icons and challenged them on making everything harder to distinguish.

I hate contemporary GUI design. Not all of it, but probably half.

What's the font used in the heading? Is it some flavour of Helvetica?

I'll keep using my favorite icon pack instead, thank you very much

What I keep seeing: $ $ $ $ $

Also I'm sure the designs are absolutely as humanly possible adapted to perfectly achieve their goal. Too much money, people, and time involved for this not to be the case.

And the goal was never ease of use, that doesn't bring in any more money when you have a monopoly. Engagement & forced ads do.
(By 'forced ads' in this case I do not mean directly advertising a specific product, but forcing you to pause your thoughts to specifically and consciously think about Google making the name/brand ever more part of your actual life and as such its shitty behaviour gets normalised, even trusted - thats just how our brains work even when we think otherwise ... and I hope we all think of Google as a curse on humanity.)

Hey show some respect! A whole team of people each racked up tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt and spent months tweaking their designs, just for upper management to wreck it all on a whim in order to get you those new icons.

There's always a yoyo effect with design. I fully expect Google to swing back to gothic palette and highly detailed icon within the next decade.

Remember way back when, when you could set icons to be whatever you want?

I was yelling about how windows 11 swapped out text listingzs for copy, paste, etc from its contextual menus for stupid icons just the other day. Modern UIs are becoming so “streamlined” to the point of uselessness.