There has be an over-whelming amount of negative reviews and responses on the new bing logo. Giving a solid critique is important, but even more so the ability to respond to these remarks. From what I have experienced bing is a new service from Microsoft, it aims to be a Decision Engine, to help you make decisions no less. The current logo is brutal, it’s flimsy, doesn’t command any authority nor is it inviting or reliable. It is a highly amateur looking result and a week after it’s release it already looks dated. If Microsoft don’t do something about how they approaching this whole endeavor I guarantee that this will be the usual Microsoft situation, a year from now it will be failing and wont live up to the expectations. It is essential that they rethink their strategy and listen to what the public are saying. Here is the current logo, beside it my proposal, or at least a step in the right direction.
The bing logo really oozes of basic lack of type optics. Look at how the n gets so narrow and thin at the apex. The g sits off the baseline with a half loop that doesn’t link up, not that it must, but in this case it looks too awkward. The counters are ludicrously huge and the descenders don’t rise near high enough to forgive such a huge x-height. Large x-heights are good for reading, but with a low cap you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
It will need more work but what I have done, I have done well when compared to the current state of affiars. I have paid attention to the letterforms and the space around them, the weight, contrast and the flow, something that wasn’t done the first time around. I’d advise the folks at Microsoft to get a typographer/foundry to design a custom face; or at least the four letters, or even use a typeface that already exists? Microsoft’s reluctance to pay for typeface licenses in the past render that unlikely. e.g. The Helvetica/Arial Story.
Here are some more images,
Integrated on the website without much obstruction or effort and it looks quite acceptable. Of course you could argue a total redesign of the site is needed but it is the logo I’m focusing on more than user interface.
Bing logotype at different sizes.
The logo is based on Chaparral Pro Semi bold Italic, above.
I would be exaggerating slightly to say I am content or even close to finished with this, however it is more of a suggestion of what I envision, a step in a better direction. It is in it’s early stages but already we can see an improvement. Over the coming weeks I hope to develop this further, rather than just making it acceptable or a step in the right direction I’d like to make it something more than that, something with character that is memorable. If anyone is interested in advising me on it or even offering feedback or constructive criticism I’m open for suggestions.
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To get the ball rolling, I’ve told you where I stand but what’s your opinion? We’ve heard enough about how bad the current logo is, let us start a discussion on how they could improve it?
It’s an improvement for me, as that original scaling isn’t to my liking.
Go for it, Youssef.
Oh, and thanks very much for the visits to my own site. Well appreciated.
Hey David, it is the consistency of the letterforms that let it down, this is partially due to the gratuitous horizontal scale. Somone accuratly compared it to a generic brand of yogurt, and I think they were on to something. It doesn’t come across as the institution it wants to be. Enough giving out. How would you approach it? If you dare.
In you on-site rendition you did a really poor job of cloning the clouds. Makes it hard for me to take this seriously when there are clouds that stop at right angles, and contain perfectly straight, horizontal lines.
Plus, the logo you are presenting is just as bland as the one in place now. I would suggest that if you are serious about presenting this to MS, you try something completely unique and from your creative thoughts, bot just a font change of something they have already paid for.
Using a the ‘Firebug’ plug in for firefox I was able to delete the logo in my browser by removing the relevant line of code, then screengrabbed it. Actually I noticed they looked very strange when I first came across bing. I do quite an amount of photographic retouching for clients and believe me I think it looks terrible too. If you’re interested, here’s one of the original screengrabs, http://www.whiteinkblog.com/bingpagebefore.png
I’m hoping to develop the idea of the bing logo, what I have suggested here is by no means the definitive solution but rather an idea to get us thinking about how we could improve it rather than just slate it. Thanks for the feedback bialtho!
Youssef, I very much like your ‘proposal’.
Your logo looks good in many different sizes too.
It also (at least for myself) goes well with the word itself. For me bing is neither roundy & fat (despite the b and g), nor squished vertically, it has a movement forward (to the right) then stops as if it hit on something, making ‘bing!’. OK I sound stupid here but really your design for me suits the word so much better.
You’re right, the current Bing logo is quite ackward and doesn’t really feel “bing-ish” to me. Somehow the folks at Microsoft is trying to stray away from their usual look with their Bing-look approach. But it doesn’t really sit well with me the first time I looked at it. Hmm… I like your idea with the Chaparral font. It feels direct, to-the-point, more “bing-ish” with the round yellow dot. Are you submitting the redesign to Microsoft by any chance?
@SiskaFlaurensia
http://www.SqueezeofLimeStudio.com
Ok, I’m not a designer I know, but I really think you’re taking the wrong direction here. The current logo is great to be honest, but even if it needed to be improved, there’s something about your proposal that’s just not right. Sorry to critique so harshly, but I really don’t like it.
It’s an improvement, but I don’t particularly like the typeface. It looks dated, and generic. Just a personal taste, though.
I’d like to apologize for that last comment. A ‘friend’ of mine got onto my computer and decided to leave a comment on here. I apologize deeply. My personal opinion is that I don’t like the existing logo, but unfortunately don’t know enough to make judgement on it, or yours for that matter. :)
Sorry again.
I think with the web presence envisaged and strived for, the proposal is far stronger, more memorable and more inline with the nature of the site.
Definitely a step up, though I would be interested to see some further iterations perhaps with some simple and subtle decorative elements to bring it off the page a little more, but thats just me!
Good work.
@_markadams
@Caroline
You’ve hit on what I have tried to. You’re correct about the italic slant and weight of the letters. I had tried taking the dot on the ‘i’ and making it a full stop after the g. As if to show you’ve reached a conclusion and hit what you’ve being looking for, that way the dot becomes the ‘bing’ sound, bing being the sound a idea lightbulb makes! A moment of succes. It’s defiantly something I’m going to explore further with updates! Keep on eye on here!
@Siska
I’m going to explore this further, develop it as much as I can or at least until I am happy with how it looks, then I will starting talking with them about it.
@Shaps
Both of the comments were helpful, the first one was fine. I want to hear both sides of the discussion, I don’t expect everyone to like it, it would be strange if they did. So thank you to you and your friend.
»If Microsoft don’t do something about it I guarantee that this will be the usual Microsoft situation, a year from now it will be failing and wont live up to the expectations.«
i really can’t imagine that if this will fail it’s because of the logo :)
I didn’t notice the slight baseline shift for g in the current logo. Otherwise, the current logo (type) looks good to me (imo). Especially, the letter ‘g’ resembles a magnifying glass icon (as found in Windows explorer or in the search toolbar). So, I see a purpose and clarify in the current design.
Tracking looks good in your logo. However, the type looks normal. Doesn’t the g sit above baseline in this type too? I also didn’t like the serif font and curling g–way too busy.
How are you doing Marucs? nice of you to stop by, Fridays are chilled here in Amsterdam. Yeah I think I may have exaggerated a little. It was primarily to emphasis what if they don’t take every aspect of the project seriously then it will undoubtedly not live up to expectations, or possibly result in a failure. A logo is only as good as the principles it represents. It’s a by-product of what it represents, it comes after, it in itself is not the service or product.
I just did a blog post on this very subject. Good to see that someone else shares my view of the Bing logo.
Hello,
Great blog and really nice posts but this font looks awful (embedded in browser) for reading ( font-family: adobe garamond pro, adobe garamond, garamond, georgia, times, serif; ), maybe set georgia as main or some other? Have you tested it?
Regards,
Benjamin Alijagić
hey youssef, i’m doing fine so far thanks for asking :)
yea but service first, then the logo :) maybe i didn’t listen carefully enough but that feels like an exact replica of google to me. why would anyone do this? (fighting for users probably) fits well in the tradition of the last ten microsoft-years though … so, i’m fine with a shitty logo if the rest works well.
anyways, some suggestions for your blog if you let me: remove the captcha-thing. that’s yesterday’s technology. akismet is getting the job done from my experience.
have a pleasent weekend! :)
mh, blockquote-tag didn’t work. :)
I really do need to check out akismet! i seen it but I’m going to investigate it more. Still working out the kinks. Thanks for the feedback and advice!
i am maintaining erik’s blog (http://spiekermann.com) and akismet blocks every single spam comment.
here’s another trick: http://klauskjeldsen.dk/2007/07/19/avoid-html-form-spam-using-css/
quite old. don’t know if that works though.
I certainly share with you the same feeling that this logo falls short of whatever it was trying to accomplish. While I feel your logo is a step in the right direction, I still agree that there is still work to be done. My first gripe is the color. Google does a magnificent job at keeping a logo simple while varying color. Color psychology would suggest that they are trying to convey a lot. True? I think so. They are a search engine that gets most answers. They have a ton of services. They therefore are doing lots… Brilliant. They are staying true to their brand promise. But what is bing trying to achieve? Honestly, the thought of microsoft making decisions for me is scary. Perhaps blood red and a destroy typeface would go well! I kid, but really, what are they trying to achieve? I don’t even know. If it’s a search engine, there are loads already and its doomed like other microsoft products that have tried to imitate industry leaders. Don’t they already have MSN? Find out their brand promise, tie in some colors that are befitting, and I think you move closer to success with this one by solving some inherent confusion.
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@Do
I’d agree with many of the things you’ve said, the bing brand lacks the integrity that you want when someone says they will be making decisions for you.
When someone doesn’t look how it should, it’s hard to trust it. They need to establish themselves as an authority on web search and finding answers. Google is now a household name, it’s an institution, they are the go to guys. The competition is strong, microsoft will needed to pull something major out of the bag if they want to compete.
They are onto some fascinating ideas with their airfare flight price predictor but they need to develop that way of thinking further.
Google are doing an amazing job of sorting out all the information but what microsoft should aim to do is use that information, make it relevant, like they are with the airfare trends.
I think you’re design is 100% better than the bing logo, I really dislike the current logo.
You have a very interesting solution here, Youssef. The type treatment is very compatible with the engine and looks a lot better than the existing logo in the context of the site.
The leterforms have the benefit of classic proportions but with a hip edge. I wonder if you should consider using a display face for larger sizes as it currently seems pretty heavy. Then save your caption solutions for smaller reproductions.
Nice work!
I am a graphic design student, and I am fascinated by this discussion. I do think that the current logo lacks weight because of how thin the font is, which makes it easily forgettable. I like the thickness of the font you selected, although I usually prefer sans serif fonts in logos. (Does the Chaparral font usually look italicized, or did you italicize it?) I would redo it with a thicker sans serif font and some simple 3D effect where highlights on the letters came from an unknown light source to the left. I would also pick a warmer font color.
Hey Youssef!
Love this, very well done. It’s a shame they didn’t take a simple approach to their identity. No brainer, this is a huge improvement!
Cheers,
Jason R.
Jason Robb
Experience Design & Implementation
http://jasonrobb.com
http://uxboston.com
http://uiscraps.tumblr.com
Youssef,
I was among the many other designers on the initial design team for the Bing logo and each one of us presented different logo concepts to Microsoft. We showed them a HUGE variety of logos, fonts, color schemes, etc. Even something very similar to what you proposed, however, the client was very particular about what they wanted.
So while you believe you have a great concept here and the answer to what you believe to be an ill-designed logo, let me assure you, it wouldn’t have been a contender, since this is not even close to the direction they wanted to go in.
As a fellow designer, I would hope you would realize how horrible it would be to have your work (that you did not have total control over) dissected by a million other designers. All of who had no idea what you had to go through in the process and who you had to answer to.
I guarantee you that if your proposed logo was chosen, you would have someone just like you posting a blog just like this about how they could improve upon it.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I understand the situation you must be in, to have been part of something but at the same time not having control over it. It must be frustrating. Particularly when people are opening criticizing it.
As i said at the beginning of this article, there has been a huge amount of chat about the Bing logo, majority of it negative, but it’s all talk an no action. Very little effort was made to offer any suggestions, something a little be more pro-active than moaning.
I didn’t want to make this anything personal to anyone but instead to explore different possibilities.
I am no expert when it comes to logo design but I think the current one is better than the proposal. The proposal font looks very dated and cheaply done. I actually quite like the current logo – it seems very Web 2.0 to me which I think they were going for. Normally I am not a fan of Microsoft anything…and I also have never used Bing.com, but I don’t see anything wrong with the current logo.
This site rocks!
I don’t know If I said it already but …Excellent site, keep up the good work. I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks, :)
A definite great read..
-Bill-Bartmann
i have been using the BING search engine for a couple of weeks. Bing seems to be as good as Google but for some reason i would still want to stick with Google search engine ,-
I like yours a lot more than the original. But it seems a bit too much of a Google “Me Too”.