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Caveat: I'm a software developer who's worked in agencies for half of my 20 year career. A few thoughts: 1. Branding is hard: everybody things they can do it.

Caveat: I'm a software developer who's worked in agencies for half of my 20 year career. A few thoughts: 1. Branding is hard: everybody things they can do it. Creative direction and art direction are really, really hard. If you haven't seen the "Make my logo bigger cream" video, go watch it, and then have some grace with the Go team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgcX0y1Nzhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgcX0y1Nzhs 2. A brand is WAY more than a logo. I get that's the first thing you grab, but the logo is just the identify of the brand. If you think it's all creative mumbo jumbo, I encourage you to go read Aaker's "Building Strong Brands" https://www.amazon.com/Building-Strong-Brands-David-Aaker/dp/002900151X https://www.amazon.com/Building-Strong-Brands-David-Aaker/dp... Go read the Brand Guide twice before you start throwing darts. https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v1.0.pdf https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v... Having seen 100s of these over the years, this is excellent work from people who honestly care. It also addresses almost every single negative comment on this thread. I also like how they call out explicitely "The gopher is not a logo" which is entirely true. I think it's more of a "lovemark" (see https://www.amazon.com/Lovemarks-Kevin-Roberts/dp/157687270X https://www.amazon.com/Lovemarks-Kevin-Roberts/dp/157687270X) It's not my favorite logo, but it's definitely on brand. If the go team is reading this: it might help if you lead with the mark and the mascot together. I think the logo in isolation is what's generating the strong reaction.

kenshi 8y ago
Thanks for taking the time to post all those informative links. Usually these kinds of discussions end up being people expressing what they like or dislike about the re-brand. I'd suggest that a re-brand that didn't provoke a strong reaction was a waste of time.
rukuu001 8y ago
> A brand is WAY more than a logo. I thought it was super-interesting they used the word 'brand' instead of 'branding'. As if a brand ("what people say about you when you're not listening") could be conjured from a logo and set of colours.
carapace 8y ago
I see that "Brand Guide" as style over substance personified: > Roboto is a contemporary sans serif typeface designed for readability. That's an oxymoron: "sans serif typeface designed for readability". Thin sans serif body text is how you show you hate your reader's eyes. And they didn't even run a damn spell-checker over the thing: > For additional background and guideance (sic) (Points for using the correct word "typeface" in lieu of "font" tho. Are you watching Woz!?)
- matt4077 8y ago
  For screen reading, sans is often preferred. It's possible that this is somewhat outdated advice with the advent of High-DPI displays, but it certainly still holds true if you're targetting a diverse set of devices, including older screens. And, since you went there first: "lieu".
  - carapace 8y ago
    D'oh! I mispelled "lieu" but corrected it within the edit window. Heh. That's classic: I'm scolding the other fellow for not looking where he's going and I walk into a pole myself. Heh. but... I'm a rando posting in anger. They're a brand company that just released a thing for Google with a typo in the "Brand Guide". (It's in the PDF, is it in the hardcopy? I'd be mortified if this was my project.) I don't really have a response for your point about screen reading.
    - vram22 8y ago
      >That's classic: I'm scolding the other fellow for not looking where he's going and I walk into a pole myself. Heh. Muphry's Law :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
indescions_2018 8y ago
It's because branding is so dashed hard. And because it must capture the soul of the product. Its raison d'etre. That makes it so easy to miss the mark. It's only allotted 100ms of human response time to make a user fall in love. And I do believe this rebrand is a miss. Nothing about it communicates Go's unique personality. Or deep tradition. Compare to the incomparable Paula Scher's work at Pentagram. I'll single out the rebrand for MIT Media Lab. About as good as it gets. Mapping perfectly to the myriad bespoke research programs in everything from "affective computing" to "soft robots": https://www.pentagram.com/work/mit-media-lab/story https://www.pentagram.com/work/mit-media-lab/story In any event, I love that this turned into such a lively discussion here. We should have more of these live critiques. The value of this kind of feedback is amazing ;)
chrisseaton 8y ago
What is the 'Make my logo bigger cream' video satirising? Is it a common reaction from clients of design agencies to ask for the logo to be bigger?
- wiremine 8y ago
  It is (in my experience), although that's not the point. They are satirising how clients tend to destroy good designs with bad feedback.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    Maybe the clients know more than the designers about what their requirements are?
    - wiremine 8y ago
      Sure, you would hope so. The problem is all in communication: 1. Communicating the requirements with enough clarity to enable the designer to translate those requirements into creative. 2. Communicating constructive feedback to adjust the creative. The most productive exchanges are when the client understands the creative process.
stonogo 8y ago
Apologies, but I disagree with basically everything you're saying here. Branding isn't hard; forcing a constructed brand is hard. That's the real source of friction here. A brand might be way more than a logo, but THIS brand is not. That logo is literally the only thing this design agency contributed at all. Even the colors were already in use around the project. If the difference between "a brand" and "a logo" is "ten pages of marketspeak" then I'm even less convinced that branding is hard. I read the "brand guide." It's exactly what I expect from a professional design firm: meaningless noise, carefully typeset. The entirety of section 1 is a PR quickref chart, of no interest or use to anyone but project managers dealing with micromanaging executives. Section 2.0 is breathless pseudo-art crap and some trademark defense. 2.1 contains pointless backstory for fonts that are firmly in the "Google already had lying around" category. Finally, the cartoon gets its own section, expressly to head off the whining from the old guard. I've also seen a ton of this crap over the years, and none of it has ever made the slightest bit of difference. This is exactly the kind of time-and-money-wasting that occurs when some facet of management has gone off the rails. Let's hope the derelict in question is somewhere in marketing, and unable to affect the quality of the actual technology in question. As for the actual logo, I don't have an opinion about it. I don't think there's anything there to have an opinion about. I've never been a big fan of the gopher cartoon, but at least it had some character, which likely comes from the talent of a real artist.
- wiremine 8y ago
  > Branding isn't hard; forcing a constructed brand is hard. That's the real source of friction here. Let's agree to disagree. I've been involved in dozens of branding processes. None of them were easy, from the strategy to the creative to the execution. If the agency did their job, the brand guide _should_ feel obvious. That's how you know it's on brand. <rant>I find this sort of comment very condescending to designers. I'n not a designer, but I've managed them. Good design is hard. Good creative is hard. Good branding is hard. This was excellent work, and if you see "marketspeak" you need to re-evaluate what good creative work looks like.</rant>
  - marcus_holmes 8y ago
EnderMB 8y ago
My experience is pretty much the same as yours, and I largely agree with everything you've said. One thing I'll add is that one of the reasons why branding is hard is because there is often a surprisingly large disconnect between how users perceive a brand/product, and how the creators perceive it. My favourite approach to coming up with a brand structure is to go through archetypes with both the client and a subset of users. Archetypes are a great way to get the initial planning of brand perception down, but a lot of designers will do it purely with the client. Nearly every time I've had the fortune to work at an agency that does it for both sides, the perception of the brand has been very different. I think the agency have done a good job, but I do wonder whether they took the time to see how users perceive the Go language. Based on the comments on here, my guess is that they didn't. https://smashingideas.com/behavioral-archetypes/ https://smashingideas.com/behavioral-archetypes/
pier25 8y ago
I'm a rare breed of designer + developer with 20 years of experience and I've been involved in branding projects with marketing agencies too. I agree, branding is hard, pleasing humans is hard. In the case of Go I think both the branding and the logo are a mistake, objectively speaking. I get that in the briefing they conveyed to the designers the idea that Go is a fun programming language, but both the client and the designers completely ignored the target audience. Developers, specially Go developers, care about reliability, performance, convenience, stability, etc. None of these characteristics is expressed in the brand other than "fun" above anything else. Subjectively speaking I have a strong reaction against the brand. I'd rather have the old ugly gopher than this which I can't identify or empathize with in any way.

kenshi 8y ago

Thanks for taking the time to post all those informative links. Usually these kinds of discussions end up being people expressing what they like or dislike about the re-brand. I'd suggest that a re-brand that didn't provoke a strong reaction was a waste of time.

rukuu001 8y ago

> A brand is WAY more than a logo. I thought it was super-interesting they used the word 'brand' instead of 'branding'. As if a brand ("what people say about you when you're not listening") could be conjured from a logo and set of colours.

carapace 8y ago

I see that "Brand Guide" as style over substance personified: > Roboto is a contemporary sans serif typeface designed for readability. That's an oxymoron: "sans serif typeface designed for readability". Thin sans serif body text is how you show you hate your reader's eyes. And they didn't even run a damn spell-checker over the thing: > For additional background and guideance (sic) (Points for using the correct word "typeface" in lieu of "font" tho. Are you watching Woz!?)

matt4077 8y ago
For screen reading, sans is often preferred. It's possible that this is somewhat outdated advice with the advent of High-DPI displays, but it certainly still holds true if you're targetting a diverse set of devices, including older screens. And, since you went there first: "lieu".
- carapace 8y ago
  D'oh! I mispelled "lieu" but corrected it within the edit window. Heh. That's classic: I'm scolding the other fellow for not looking where he's going and I walk into a pole myself. Heh. but... I'm a rando posting in anger. They're a brand company that just released a thing for Google with a typo in the "Brand Guide". (It's in the PDF, is it in the hardcopy? I'd be mortified if this was my project.) I don't really have a response for your point about screen reading.
  - vram22 8y ago
    >That's classic: I'm scolding the other fellow for not looking where he's going and I walk into a pole myself. Heh. Muphry's Law :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law

indescions_2018 8y ago

It's because branding is so dashed hard. And because it must capture the soul of the product. Its raison d'etre. That makes it so easy to miss the mark. It's only allotted 100ms of human response time to make a user fall in love. And I do believe this rebrand is a miss. Nothing about it communicates Go's unique personality. Or deep tradition. Compare to the incomparable Paula Scher's work at Pentagram. I'll single out the rebrand for MIT Media Lab. About as good as it gets. Mapping perfectly to the myriad bespoke research programs in everything from "affective computing" to "soft robots": https://www.pentagram.com/work/mit-media-lab/story https://www.pentagram.com/work/mit-media-lab/story In any event, I love that this turned into such a lively discussion here. We should have more of these live critiques. The value of this kind of feedback is amazing ;)

chrisseaton 8y ago

What is the 'Make my logo bigger cream' video satirising? Is it a common reaction from clients of design agencies to ask for the logo to be bigger?

wiremine 8y ago
It is (in my experience), although that's not the point. They are satirising how clients tend to destroy good designs with bad feedback.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  Maybe the clients know more than the designers about what their requirements are?
  - wiremine 8y ago
    Sure, you would hope so. The problem is all in communication: 1. Communicating the requirements with enough clarity to enable the designer to translate those requirements into creative. 2. Communicating constructive feedback to adjust the creative. The most productive exchanges are when the client understands the creative process.

stonogo 8y ago

Apologies, but I disagree with basically everything you're saying here. Branding isn't hard; forcing a constructed brand is hard. That's the real source of friction here. A brand might be way more than a logo, but THIS brand is not. That logo is literally the only thing this design agency contributed at all. Even the colors were already in use around the project. If the difference between "a brand" and "a logo" is "ten pages of marketspeak" then I'm even less convinced that branding is hard. I read the "brand guide." It's exactly what I expect from a professional design firm: meaningless noise, carefully typeset. The entirety of section 1 is a PR quickref chart, of no interest or use to anyone but project managers dealing with micromanaging executives. Section 2.0 is breathless pseudo-art crap and some trademark defense. 2.1 contains pointless backstory for fonts that are firmly in the "Google already had lying around" category. Finally, the cartoon gets its own section, expressly to head off the whining from the old guard. I've also seen a ton of this crap over the years, and none of it has ever made the slightest bit of difference. This is exactly the kind of time-and-money-wasting that occurs when some facet of management has gone off the rails. Let's hope the derelict in question is somewhere in marketing, and unable to affect the quality of the actual technology in question. As for the actual logo, I don't have an opinion about it. I don't think there's anything there to have an opinion about. I've never been a big fan of the gopher cartoon, but at least it had some character, which likely comes from the talent of a real artist.

wiremine 8y ago
> Branding isn't hard; forcing a constructed brand is hard. That's the real source of friction here. Let's agree to disagree. I've been involved in dozens of branding processes. None of them were easy, from the strategy to the creative to the execution. If the agency did their job, the brand guide _should_ feel obvious. That's how you know it's on brand. <rant>I find this sort of comment very condescending to designers. I'n not a designer, but I've managed them. Good design is hard. Good creative is hard. Good branding is hard. This was excellent work, and if you see "marketspeak" you need to re-evaluate what good creative work looks like.</rant>
- marcus_holmes 8y ago

EnderMB 8y ago

My experience is pretty much the same as yours, and I largely agree with everything you've said. One thing I'll add is that one of the reasons why branding is hard is because there is often a surprisingly large disconnect between how users perceive a brand/product, and how the creators perceive it. My favourite approach to coming up with a brand structure is to go through archetypes with both the client and a subset of users. Archetypes are a great way to get the initial planning of brand perception down, but a lot of designers will do it purely with the client. Nearly every time I've had the fortune to work at an agency that does it for both sides, the perception of the brand has been very different. I think the agency have done a good job, but I do wonder whether they took the time to see how users perceive the Go language. Based on the comments on here, my guess is that they didn't. https://smashingideas.com/behavioral-archetypes/ https://smashingideas.com/behavioral-archetypes/

pier25 8y ago

I'm a rare breed of designer + developer with 20 years of experience and I've been involved in branding projects with marketing agencies too. I agree, branding is hard, pleasing humans is hard. In the case of Go I think both the branding and the logo are a mistake, objectively speaking. I get that in the briefing they conveyed to the designers the idea that Go is a fun programming language, but both the client and the designers completely ignored the target audience. Developers, specially Go developers, care about reliability, performance, convenience, stability, etc. None of these characteristics is expressed in the brand other than "fun" above anything else. Subjectively speaking I have a strong reaction against the brand. I'd rather have the old ugly gopher than this which I can't identify or empathize with in any way.