RTFA: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-googl…

Google changed its favicon last year and many people said that the new one was ugly. Probably this the reason why Google decided to use another favicon starting from today. The new favicon uses all the colors from Google’s logo, while keeping the same lowercase “g”.

Marissa Mayer’s description from last year is very appropriate. “We wanted something distinctive and noticeable (…). We wanted something that embraced the colorfulness of the logo, yet wouldn’t date itself.” Adam Howard, a reader of this blog, thinks that the new favicon “looks like a mini paint-by-numbers”.

Here is the new, new Google favicon (or favicon.ico) It certainly is more colorful, but I’m not sure how it will stand up against the rest of the tabs in my browser… and I have tons of tabs open at any given time.

To get some sense of how this happened, I’ve included some of the permutations Google worked through when creating their previous favicon in May 2008:

RTFA: http://www.neatorama.com/2008/02/07/the-evolution-…

You’ve seen these tech logos everywhere, but have you ever wondered how they came to be? Did you know that Apple’s original logo was Isaac Newton under an apple tree? Or that Nokia’s original logo was a fish?
Let’s take a look at the origin of tech companies’ logos and how they evolved over time

…an excellent waste of time.

RTFA: http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000273.php

Did you have to manipulate the font in anyway to create a perfect arrow?

Yes, indeed. I was studying Univers 67 (Bold Condensed) and Futura Bold, both wonderful faces. But each had its potential limitations downstream in application to thousands of FedEx media, from waybills and embroidered courier caps to FedEx.com and massive signage for aircraft, buildings and vehicles. Moreover, neither was particularly suited to forcing an arrow into its assigned parking place without torturing the beautifully crafted letterforms of the respective faces. To avoid getting too technical here, suffice it to say I took the best characteristics of both and combined them into unique and proprietary letterforms that included both ligatures (connected letters) and a higher “x-height,” or increased size of the lower-case letters relative to the capital letters. I worked these features around until the arrow seemed quite natural in shape and location.

This is a sortof weird interview, but the subject matter is really niche and obscure. It’s sometimes cool when people get minorly jargon-tastic in some language I don’t understand yet. Sometimes, it’s so annoying, but that stuff usually doesn’t get posted to RTFA.