Branche Software
Agentur Pentagram

Windows: New Identity by Pentagram.

Quelle: www.pentagram.com
17.2.2012
windows8

As Micro­soft pre­pa­res for the launch of Win­dows 8, the new ver­sion of its ope­ra­ting sys­tem, it has announ­ced a bold new iden­tity that takes the ico­nic Win­dows logo back to its roots — as a win­dow. Desi­gned by Pentagram’s Paula Scher, the logo re-imagines the fami­liar four-color sym­bol as a modern geo­me­tric shape that intro­du­ces a new per­spec­tive on the Microsoft brand.

 

Mee­ting with Micro­soft early in the deve­lop­ment pro­cess, Scher asked: “Your name is Win­dows. Why are you a flag?”

 

The ans­wer is the brand star­ted as a win­dow, but over the years, as com­pu­ting sys­tems grew more power­ful and gra­phics more com­plex, evol­ved into a flag. Scher made the assump­tion that the waving flag was pro­bably a result of typi­cal indus­try com­ments that a plain win­dow looked too sta­tic, and that strai­ght lines were too severe.

 

“I think the waving flag was meant to be a flag in per­spec­tive,” says Scher. “All of the cli­chés of tech­no­logy design are based on the idea that icons should look dimen­sio­nal like pro­duct design that tech desi­gners call ‘chrome’ –  – look at the iPhone inter­face where ever­y­thing has gra­da­tion and drop shadows.”

 

The new iden­tity returns the logo to its roots. The name Win­dows was ori­gi­nally intro­du­ced as a meta­phor for see­ing into screens and sys­tems and a new view on tech­no­logy. The new iden­tity reintro­du­ces this idea with the actual visual prin­ci­ples of per­spec­tive. It also reflects the Metro design lan­guage deve­l­o­ped by Micro­soft for its pro­ducts, gra­phics and user interfaces.

 

In a post on his blog, Sam Moreau, Microsoft’s Prin­ci­pal Direc­tor of User Expe­ri­ence for Win­dows, says: “’Win­dows’ really is a beau­ti­ful meta­phor for com­pu­ting and with the new logo we wan­ted to cele­brate the idea of a win­dow, in perspective.”

 

Scher and her team crea­ted a com­plete sys­tem based on the idea of per­spec­tive. The desi­gners com­ple­ted motion stu­dies to demons­trate the trans­for­ma­tion of the flag shape into a win­dow shape, to show that they weren’t that far apart and would be an easy and ele­gant tran­si­tion for the brand. (Marks that fit into this per­spec­tive have been crea­ted for other Micro­soft brands and pro­grams, but have not yet been implemented.)

 

In its rese­arch, the team con­side­red the Win­dows brand history. The ori­gi­nal Win­dows logo looked like a win­dow. As com­pu­ting became more power­ful, the logos for Win­dows began to get more com­plex, to show off the capa­bi­li­ties of Micro­soft sys­tems. The logo for Win­dows 1.0 resem­bled panes of glass. By Win­dows 3.1, this had been repla­ced with a waving effect for a sense of motion and the four colors that became a signa­ture of the Windows brand.

 

The new logo reflects the sleek, modern “Metro” design lan­guage first intro­du­ced by Micro­soft in its Win­dows 7 pho­nes. Metro is based on the design prin­ci­ples of the Swiss Inter­na­tio­nal Style, with clean lines, shapes and typo­gra­phy and bold, flat colors. One gui­de­line of Metro is that the gra­phic or inter­face must appear “authen­ti­cally digital” – that is, it should not appear to be mate­rial or three-dimensional using gra­di­ents or effects. The new iden­tity sug­gests dimen­sio­na­lity using the clas­sic prin­ciple of per­spec­tive: lines rece­ding into space.

 

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