Manifesto on Digital Style

7/31/2019 Manifesto on Digital Style

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Microsoft does have a huge issue with inconsistency, in both branding and product design. While Andrew

(the author) correctly identified an issue, his approach is deeply flawed.

A Manifesto on Digital Style

Andrew‟s proposed Microsoft logo is bland, and is aesthetically inconsistent. Typography can be done

well (as WP and Zune have shown), but he simply makes a poor choice in his font. It‟s not Segoe UI – not

a big deal… as long as Microsoft‟s “modern” branding extends that font change to everywhere Microsoft‟s

flagship font is found: Windows, Xbox, Office, Windows Phone, Bing… everywhere. A lot of good design

work went into Segoe to make sure that everything from the flags and the finials to the apexes and the

angles matched up. This font maintains an awkward semblance of mixed-casing with the lack of a dot on

the „i' and the ambiguous casing of the other letters; few of them are definitively upper- or lower-case,

which draws the eye unintentionally to the overtly rectangular „i' and circular, inartistically-shaped

„o‟. Worst of all, I must say, are the finial and ascender of the „t‟. Those angles! While every other letter

maintains strictly orthogonal terminals, the „t‟ throws all convention to the wind and chooses not one, but

two angles entirely for its own abuse. Not only are they not mutually parallel, but they don‟t match the

angles introduced in the proposed logo, either! Positively horrendous.

Andrew realizes that the odd perspective thrown onto the new Window logo is “visually uncomfortable”,

and proposes a replacement… not only for Windows, but a design paradigm to be expanded to Surfaceand Office. The proposed Windows logo is too simple – it‟s merely a rotated parallelogram, with no

defining features. It‟s a shape found in the simplest children‟s toys and on your families‟ refrigerators. It‟s

not something that could ever become synonymous with Microsoft or Microsoft‟s products. Andrew tries

to creating a united branding within Microsoft products by remaking the logos into collections of these

parallelograms, but the result is unintuitive, inconsistent, and no more unique than the original

shape. Taking a look at the “logo application” section, the slash looks out-of-place, generic, and

imbalanced on the Surface and the Lumia 800. Further, the Surface logo doesn‟t allude to a tablet/slate,

the Windows logo trashes 25 years of cultural recognition, and the Office logo is some lovespawn of 80s-

retro and contemporary styles… not that either has any place in digital design. Good design is classic; it

doesn‟t allude to any particular time period, and requires only minimal modifications (shading and

lighting effects, in this case) to be updated for the newest decade. Contrarily, „retro‟ is designed to look

old-fashioned, and „contemporary‟ cool for a few months – tops – before some other design house comes

along and decides that something else looks even cooler for the next wave of products.

He suggests merging Windows Phone with the Surface for marketing branding. Absurdity , I

call! Although they share the Windows Core and receive touch input, there is little similarity between the

products, unlike Apple‟s iPhone/iPad pairing (not that I am suggesting that Microsoft ought to have taken

the mobile-OS-on-a-tablet route). By branding them both “Surface”, people will expect them to have

similar functionalities and it simply devolves from there, as it is unreasonable to interact identically (or



even similarly, I would argue) with both a phone and a

laptop(/tablet, as the Surface is designed to be

both). Also, try saying “I got a SurfacePhone!” or

“Woo! SurfaceTablet!” excitedly. You can‟t. “Surface”

sounds cool, but not when appended with another

word. Too many companies do this: they take

“ownership” over a word or name, then abuse the crap

out of it. Nokia appears to be doing it with the Lumia

(610, 710, 800, 900; please choose a new name or drop

the number!) and Microsoft squashed gaming and

media (Zune) together as Xbox. The worst offender by

far, however, is Samsung, and “Galaxy” (Galaxy, S, SII,

SII Skyrocket, SIII, Nexus, Ace, Note, and Tab…

seriously, wtf). Also, why do the „i's in “Windows” and

“Office” get dotted, yet Microsoft‟s doesn‟t?

While I‟m on it, we need to discuss

Metro. Since the advent of Windows 8‟s start-screen, people have misconstrued the design

philosophy to mean large, flat, colored tiles

everywhere. No, that ain‟t it. Metro is a

typography-centric set of design standards,

with bold colors used to accent the

content. It‟s about the intersection of

functional (flat and typography-based) with

attractive (white-space, bold color contrasts,

consistency, and liveliness/animation). These

new palates almost all fail the “bold contrast”

test. Light grey on light grey and dark grey on

dark grey are classic combinations, so those

get a pass, but the acidic green on grey, white

on sky blue, and navy on black all strain the eyes, either with the background-tile matchup (acid-grey and

navy-black) or the text-tile combination (white-sky blue). Here is a really good slide deck from when

Microsoft first introduced Metro. See how far (backward) it‟s come? Notice how colors were used to

accent text and icons… they meant something, rather than the “color-picker roulette” from this

post. Andrew - as well as Microsoft – need to cement the associations between colors and destinations

(functions), as that‟s what subways/undergrounds have done to ensure that you get the information you

need from the quickest possible glance?

The proposed billboards and bags are dangerously Apple-esque, and fit with neither the original Metro

nor the proposed rebranding style. Naught but a symbol (again, completely meaningless to anyoneunfamiliar with the brand, painfully generic otherwise) and a name. The posters look pretty good - at

least they contain images of actual products rather than a slash and a company name like the billboards –

but they look like something Casa de Jobs would put out. Microsoft‟s, to truly embrace Metro, should at

least say something about the product and its functionality rather than simply making a bold, qualitative

statement.

http://ecn.channel9.msdn.com/o9/mix/10/pptx/CL14.pptx





Having thoroughly lambasted his work otherwise, I‟ll say that I do like his vision of the wallet hub for the

most part. His odd mixing of text-casing conventions (“First Letter Capitalized” versus “all lowercase”

versus “ALL CAPITALIZED”) aside, I think these display an attractive balance of text, color (though this

depends ultimately on the card vendor), and logo. The font itself also has to change (it‟s Calibri, rather

than the Segoe UI (light) used throughout the rest of Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox), but this bit

has potential.

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Manifesto on Digital Style