Android Police are reporting on a somewhat questionable rumour that Google’s core Android applications might be about to receive a graphic makeover. As you can see in the header graphic above, we’ve snapped three logos each for Gmail and Calendar: The current ‘web’ icon (from the web service), the current Android icon in the middle, and a proposed new icon for Android on the right.
The reason for these changes? To flatten out the icons a bit and have them more closely resemble the design language used elsewhere; in other words, make Google products a bit more recognisable as such, and unify the appearance and icons across different platforms.
It seems logical enough, but there’s not really much to the rumour besides… well.. a few crafted images, such as that shown above.
Android Police have cited this image, supposedly provided by “someone close to the source” (a spurious citation if ever there was one), as their evidence that change is coming:
To us, the new logos certainly look nice and new, and probably a bit ‘flatter’ as well, but at the end of the day, it’s just a mocked up image, and means little.
Android Police have cited some further ‘evidence’ in the form of these logos being used elsewhere by Google, but to us, this doesn’t mean much at all — we know that Google uses different icons / graphics for the same service depending on where they’re referred to, so the existence of these particular icons somewhere else doesn’t point to too much, we think.
If these new icons are coming, we say great. They look nice and will bring a more consistent view to some of Google’s most popular user-facing web properties, and their associated Android apps. If they’re not, then we’ll chalk it up to another rumour powered by little by way of evidence. After all, that’s what Android is all about, isn’t it?
😉
