The evolution of Google logo as well as its Play Store logo

Have you ever wondered about the birth of well – known search engine giant Google?

Nowadays everybody is familiar with this significant search engine GOOGLE and is being used by each and every person on this planet every second but surprisingly only few people in the world know it’s history. So, through this article I will share the origin of Google’s Logo with you. All of you might be amazed to know that Google emerged in the year 1996 and initially was named as “Backrub”. The picture is given below:

The logo of Google’s predecessor “Backrub” was very simple with a text featuring the scan of Larry Page’s hand.

A year into the progress, the “Backrub” was transformed the favorite search engine “Google” in 1997.

Take a glance at Google’s first logo where six different colors are used for the search engine Google.

When I saw this at first, it was hard to believe, Was this the Google ‘s logo?

But over time many such improvements have been carried out further in this logo and I will provide you brief information about them.

With the next iteration in 1998, Google used this label involving a contrasting blend of colors. From that year till now, Google commenced towards the modification of design of their logo.

I mentioned earlier the Google’s move of shaping towards the logo that we see as of now. With this upgradation, Google replaced the color of first letter “G” from green to blue with a shadow effect and further an exclamation mark in the end. The letters in this label were rounded also and displayed distinct shades of letters. The Shadow effect in alphabet adds some reality to images. This all continued till the year 1999. But suddenly they made some more remarkable changes to this logo. Let’s see now what were the new changes.

With this development, the Logo of Google got its typeface changed from Baskerville to Catull. Recalling old memories when I first opened google this was the logo that I saw. At that time this logo of google captured everyone’s eyes. But now, comparing it with today’s logo this logo is outdated. This logo of 1999 depicts little shadow effects of the letters over the previous one and moreover the exclamation mark was also removed in this logo. The Google adopted this design of logo for almost 11 years from 1999 to 2010.

With the passing of years, the logo of google is also improving further with removal of some shadow effects. It’s like they are deriving their logo from their previously designed logo by removing effects. This design was unveiled in 2010. The outer shadows are almost gone what remains are the inner shadows and some more flattening of letters as well as removal of sharpened edges.

The above design of the logo came forward in 2013.This one also maintained the trend of flat design for letters which had gained fame back then and is still accepted now.

At this moment, this Google’s logo is being used from September 1,2015. Now Here we are with the current logo of Google which has a san-serif font and looks astonishing. That’s all about the evolution of Google’s logo.

Play Store

Now I will share with you the starting point of Google’s Play Store icon. The google play store or the android market is the product of Leading technology giant Google and is therefore the application store for Android operating systems which permit several users to browse and download apps that are built with Android SDK. Google play store, an official app store for android smartphones and tablets is a one-step approach for downloading software applications, movies, books and music.

Let’s have a look at its icon now!

The initial icon of Google play store came out in 2008 and was used till 2011.During that time Play Store was called as Android Market. It seems to be a shopping bag with android image on it. The color of the straps is black.

After years of development, google began working on the design of this play store icon. This icon was put to use for Play Store from 2011-2012. The picture show case the front side of shopping bag with small straps to hold and the same android icon on it. There is also a partition in the bag. In the later amendments, the design of this play store icon and the name experienced various changes. Now let’s move further to catch a glimpse of further modifications.

In 2012, the Android Market was renamed to the prominent “Google Play Store” And a new icon was also created along with it. This icon had a triangular play button icon on a white shopping bag along with removed shadows.

Some further improvements gave birth to again a fresh icon of play store which was revealed back in 2014.The design of the icon wasn’t completely changed. This icon takes into consideration of some flat design principles which are almost shadow less. Along with flat design , the dynamic color palette of this icon makes it more favourable.

From 2014-Present this is the official icon of Play Store. The biggest change is seen in the new Play Music button icon. It is almost the same but has some minor changes from the previous icon as we can clearly see the color of shopping bag is little light and the colors of the play icon are more brightened and partition in the icon is taken off. At the end, What I learned from the history of Google’s logo and Google Play Store’s icon is that using simple design techniques in an icon is the best way to create an icon.

Now stepping forward to the future years, let’s see what modifications will Google undertake to improve the designs of its logo and play store icon. From this we get the idea that even Google’s logo at first wasn’t all that good. It takes time to improve. And if you are up to something big in your life, then It will take time for you to improve too. Hope this article becomes an inspiration for you and helps you to make good icons in future.