14 DAY TRIAL // In mid-2008, Google revamped its favicon, the first such initiative after eight and a half years of the same icon being featured in the browser next to the company's URL. At that time, the Mountain View-based search giant explained that the overhauled favicon was responding to the need to better adapt to new platforms, especially to iPhone and additional mobile devices. However, following the introduction of the new icon, Google seems to have got a taste of the redesign process, and has announced a new favicon at the end of the past week.
“Back in June, we rolled out a new favicon — the small icon that greets you when you access Google on your URL bar or your bookmarks list, — and we encouraged our users to submit their ideas for this important piece of Google branding. We were impressed by the volume of submissions we received, and today we are happy to introduce a new Google favicon inspired by those submissions by our users. While the final icon is a reinterpretation of one contest submission, it draws on design elements and ideas from many of them,” Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience, and Micheal Lopez, Web Design lead, stated.
You can see examples of the new Google favicon in the image accompanying this article. According to the Mountain View company, the design is based on the work of André Resende, a computer science undergraduate student at the University of Campinas in Brazil. Mayer and Lopez referred to Resende's favicon as recognizable and attractive, and indicated that the design managed to capture the very essence of Google.
“Although we changed the color layout slightly and moved the 'g' off center, his submission formed the basis for our new design,” Mayer and Lopez added. “Incorporating all four of Google's colors (red, yellow, green, and blue) into the four corners of the favicon was a theme we liked in many submissions. We hope you like the new favicon, which nicely integrates all of our original criteria: distinctive in shape, noticeable, colorful, timeless, and scalable to other sizes.”