As a google fan boy this makes me very uncomfortable...

No.

I don't see the issue? The g is circular until it angles in, just like how many G's are flat at that point. I don't get wanting the lines to match, either? The margins are five px because that lines it up with the magnifying glass better

@GodHatesMe http://hackles.org/cgi-bin/...

I'm no expert but maybe pure
symmetry isn't the best approach for beauty in design. My brother is a designer and we've had lots of conversations on this matter. And from what I've learned, symmetry is cool but only to an extent.

Maybe a perfect circle G wouldn't look as good, as we are already accustomed to Gs curvature. In the url, maybe the extra px is so letters like p and q have some padding from the border and build another kind of symmetry from there. I'm pretty sure my brother explained types of symmetry to me, but I don't remember much. Anyways, maybe I'm talking total bullshit, idk much about design.

@gitcommit yup. From what I learned in some time with a landscape designer, symmetry is extremely formal, and makes things look rigid and serious. Adding inconsistentsies and organic lines makes things seem more fun and comfortable.

@gitcommit oh I do know it may not be the best design, it's more the fact that it's so close to a perfect circle that irritates me haha

@GodHatesMe The search bars on most Linux distro's are perfectly aligned...

Perfect symmetry usually doesn't look symmetric. Look at the switch logo, it's wayyyy skewed but looks symmetric.

Golden ratio is a lie

@GodHatesMe eh, I didn't say perfectly, I said better. I like this look, but I'm not personally gonna fight about it much. It seems like a weird nitpick

Thanks, now I can't unsee and my OCD is going to make me commit sodoku

According to Google it makes sense.

http://g-design.storage.googleapis.com/...

"Designed on the same grid as our product iconography, the circular shape was optically refined to prevent a visual “overbite” at the point where the circular form meets the crossbar. The color proportions convey the full spectrum of the logotype and are sequenced to aid eye movement around the letterform."

The logo does indeed "feel" correct, a geometrically correct version looks super awkward.

Just look how awkward it looks

@afrometal NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!

Burn it!
Cleanse it in devil fire!

@afrometal yeah, looks more like a sideways power symbol

I’m with you brother.

I’m not a google fanboy because I think it’s a mistake to put all your efforts into a single company.

But I can’t fault their historically brilliant design work:
- material; millions spent defining what it is to do design for digital in the modern age.
- logo; before this nonsense, they spent 4 million to update the serif... a minute change to make their already globally recognised, household name logo slightly more perfect.
- fonts; creating and backing open source, high quality fonts for the world to use in its designs... you’d be amazed how much roboto I see now.

Then this happened... some dick said “we have the most recognisable logo and branding in the world... let’s fuck that up”.

I guarantee it’s some fucking splooge from middle management/exec that decided throwing away decades of brand recognition was a good idea. And then they choose this piece of shit logo design from the 80s and 90s and don’t put any of that polish on it.

1.: This is stloen from Twitter
Therefor I'll steal my response from Twitter too.

This G is constructed from a perfect circle, yet it still looks wonky

@Batburger Twitter is a gold mine to steal things man

@BigMacca101
Wonderful isn't it?

@Batburger pretty much the only reason I'm still on twitter to be honest haha, even better when you find nerdy and Dev related shit 👍

@GodHatesMe
You should be dead already then.

@Batburger because the line weighting is way too thick, and that 90 degree in-turn is too high.

It’s a piece of shit.

My OCD sense is tingling

@afrometal you’re right, it feels off some how

@BM32 it looks less even, it's weird

this again ... maybe that's how they want it to be ?
...

PS: search bar looks fine in all my machines

@BigMacca101 haha. I get you.

The right side of G seems to be an arch centered on the cross you show top left. I'm on a phone.

@BigMacca101

Seeing that has guaranteed many hours of sleep lost. My OCD is through the roof right now. For real, how could this happen...Google's design team chilling too much in those fancy pod thingys I guess.

This is 100% intentional and reasonable. This is what's known as optical correction, and it's done *all the time* in visual design. Look at your favourite sans-serif font — Futura or Avenir or Helvetica or anything. Look at the letter O. Not only is it an oval, but even if it was squished back to even proportions it wouldn't be a perfect circle. It's thicker on the sides than it is on the top and bottom. It also extends a little bit below the baseline. Again, 100% intentional. Our eyes and brain see a circle to be smaller than a square of the same dimensions; horizontal lines always look thicker than vertical lines. Perfectly geometric shapes look bad.

OCD

Geometry

Pretty much nailed it.

Here’s what my dumb CEO would say:

It looks less good.; makes it more good.

The border in the URL bar aligns with the input, which is a bit higher because there are some characters which are longer at the bottom

Haha did you get this from TheNextWeb? I saw the exact same image in one of their blog posts.
Anyway, The logo is visually balanced and appealing to the eye, it just works when you look at it. Of course our OCD will kick in when we compare it to a perfect circle.
Just like in typography, there will be letters ( like o,q,g,f etc) that exceed the baseline and cap line to be visually pleasing.

So actually, both are deliberate desigm choices, the G would look less balanced otherwise. Some guy on YouTube had a great explanation, allow me a second...

Found it https://youtu.be/hV8hOLOC_Hk

And same goes with the search bar. It's supposed to accommodate for letters with tails, like g, j, p, q, and y.