[tyrankh]

> I read the "brand guide." It's exactly what I expect from a professional design firm: meaningless noise, carefully typeset.

It's not helping the discussion to disregard an entire profession. Re-read what you wrote; it is _extremely_ heavily biased, angry venting at some corporate construct you've invented.

> at least it had some character, which likely comes from the talent of a real artist.

This is just mean.

[stonogo]

"You don't like it because you just don't know how goshdarn hard it all is" isn't a particularly useful starting point. Some of us do know how hard it can be, and some of us know when it's hard because the people doing the work don't have anything positive to contribute.

I am familiar with what I wrote: I wrote it. I'm not biased against anything; my opinions come from direct experience with dozens of design firms over many years. In-house design teams are, for example, a totally different and more positive approach. Every time you farm the job out you get junk, and this example is no exception. I'm baffled as to why this got farmed out at all -- is there no design team within Google qualified to typeset a two-letter logo based on an existing logo?

As for being "just mean," to whom am I being mean? The faceless entities who picked six colors and three corporate-approved fonts and then wrote a twenty-page document inventing reasons they did the obvious? Guilty as charged, I guess.