The Epicly Crap Bing Logo Design by Microsoft – Voice Your Thoughts
*Post Update : This post is not intended to be fair & constructive. It’s a rant, a sarcastic and juvenile venting. Microsoft have screwed up and the gloves are off. A company as huge as Microsoft can take the rantings of a mad logo designer.
The Bing Logo Design by Microsoft – Vent off here
Here are some honest thoughts on the Bing logo design. Frankly, when I first caught glimpse of this logo, I had to make sure it wasn’t April Fools, somehow I had been caught up in some time distortion field. But no. This seems to be the real deal. Microsoft has really excelled at making themselves look hideously silly… again. And this is all before the product even launches. Nice.
This is a brand extension that is need to be wound up and re thought out.
This logo is just outstandingly and epicly crap.
There is nothing about it that makes sense. Every thing that could be done wrong pretty much has been. The whole personal taste, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, its subjective doesn’t cut it here.
This logo is supremely and stupendously grim.
But that is my own opinion, and I realise there must be others out there how surely have something positive to say about it. So here is a chance to say what you feel. Leave some comments below.
Don’t hold back.
How it could look
If someone had taken just a few moments of time over this, they could have created a beauty of a logo.
This is my much improved version. Comic Sans MS never looked so gorgeous. If you are listening Microsoft, I am happy to sell you the rights to my logo idea.
Post Update: I need to add at this point that the following logo is NOT to be taken seriously. I am being sarcastic and slightly ironic and stupendously juvenile in using a Microsoft version of the much hated Comic Sans. For those that have commented assuming this was a genuine effort to improve on the original, sorry to disappoint. :)
Article Posted On: May 29, 2009 at 9.28 pm
Written By
In Categories: Branding, Design, Identity, Logo design
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121 Comments
a basic typographical logo worked for Google, it should work for MS…
So are you saying you like the logo or what? You cunningly avoided the purpose of the post.
Crap has new Name. its Bing.
So you don’t need to say : that thing is crap, anymore, you can say its so bing. :)
I think JWT designed this piece of crap. I can’t imagine this logo being final. I can’t stand looking at it.
I hope when I start working at MSFT I can figure out a way to change the logo.
I hope when you start working at MSFT you can figure out a way to change the logo. Im with you all the way.
Anyone else noticed the aches of space between the “i” and the “n”?
For a logo with only 4 letters, getting the correct letter spacing should not posed too much of a problem. Sadly it did…
It doesn’t have much personality. They have been working on this new search engine for quite some time. Giving it a killer logo wouldn’t have taken that much more effort.
I would go as far as saying it really doesn’t have any personality. It’s just ‘dead’ and decomposing.
But yes, even 10mins in Illustrator, most designers would be able to knock out a much better looking logo, even without doing any research on the why’s and for’s.
logo designers hate that , so web designers will hate this http://www.discoverbing.com/ it really doesnt scream new innovative search,
Warning dont look at it too long !
Oh god. Regardless of what you think of the logo, it looks horrendous there. It falls so short of there target “Live.com” look. The logo looks much better when it’s reversed out on the dark grey, still an exercise in utter boredom though.
My guess is that the project lead on this identity was a pain in the ass and kept forcing the designer to dumb down the logo to what you see here. It totally looks like an identity defeated by a clients that THINKS they are creative and thus keeps having you tweak the design until all that’s left is uninspired garbage. Chris is right on, this bing is blah!
Not even sure I want to look at it at all Max, already suffering from the little exposure I have had.
My two cents…It makes me sad when I see a missed opportunity, especially from such a high profile company. With a name like “bing”, a word with such strong onomatopoeia I would think the logo would carry that same chime/ring-like feeling. To me it says “blah” more than “bing” and yes, is technically poor even in its own lame style.
I have no idea what ‘onomatopoeia’ means but figure you do. :)
But yeah, it really doesn’t convey the message about what Bing is, to me it’s devoid of any meaning whatsoever except the ‘this is a crap logo meaning’.
The font is all wrong. I can see they almost tried with using a round font, but failed big time to carry it off. Looks poor and as you say, technically very poor.
onomatopoeia is when a word sounds like the sound it makes. Such as “smash” kind of sounds like something being smashed, “smack” is another one. Kinda hard to explain.
This page though http://www.discoverbing.com/ makes the logo even worse! The background is horrible and the logo just looks cheap and tacky.
Might just be me but the whole logo looks as if it has been stretched. It looks so poor. I like the colours, I can say that much but other than that it’s so poor.
I’d say it looks flattened. As if it doesn’t even have the energy to stand up straight. Or that it’s feeling crushed by the MS monolith.
As i mentioned in the post, pretty much everything is wrong. And yeah, it’s been stretched. Letter spacing, with a logo with only 4 letters is wrong.
Have to also say, Im not even a fan of the colours.
Also the not so cute effect of the ‘gouged out’ ‘i’.
Pants.
LOL! “gouged out i” That’s exactly how I feel when I look at it. :)
I’d contribute my version, but the “formatting help” link doesn’t do anything and there is no preview for comments to link an image.
Ok, thanks for the heads up on that, will get my friend to check it out. Maybe you could just provide a URL where your version resides? Would like to see it.
You’d really think Micrsoft would have gotten something right, on the web at this stage..
They need to fire their creative staff and hire a buch of freelancers, or at least they should have put together a competition for a decent logo
As another MS-hater mentioned, the logo must definitely have been made in MS-Paint. Even that, though, doesn’t really manage to justify the shittiness. Depressing on part of Miscrosoft. Hilarious, from ours. Especially that “It is just simply outstandingly epicly crap.” :D Awesome! :)
My only real conclusion is that Microsoft are playing a cool joke on us all. Watching us all get worked up into a frenzy, like us designers do so well. :)
I would rather bin it than bing it. Its incredible how the decision makers in big companies like Microsoft or Pepsico don’t seem to have any aesthetic sense!
Usually a case of too many chiefs and not enough listening to the indians…
Crap, freeware looking typography that does not stand for what Bing is supposed to be or communicate. But lately, I got used to seeing poor identities of famous websites or applications. Simply bad branding.
YOu are quite right, does seem to be a influx of poorly designed identities seeping out of the woodwork. Either that or there are just more companies starting up, more companies rebranding, so more scope for crap ones to be noticed. Meh.
It just feels flat, it doesn’t pop off the page. And that doesn’t mean to say give it a cheesy gradient and some shadow, it’s down to the bad colour choices and that stretched feel (as pointed out).
It looks like a mock to me. I highly doubt this is a final design. I hope not at least. It look like the text i skewed too. Like the designer scaled it horizontally. Its boring and plain.
But it is a bit of foreshadowing. Bing will fail just like the logo. lol
I can’t see any company putting out any press releases using a ‘beta’ version of a brand identity, its just asking for trouble.
It may be their get out clause tho should they concede.
But then again, can you see a company putting this logo out for their “BRAND”. Tsk, anything can happen these days.
Immediately reminds me of the horrific travesty that is the 2012 Olympics logo. For Bing, I’ll give one credit, (and one credit only) to the idea of the “n” looking like an arch. An entry-way to the ultimate internet search engine. Hahaha, just kidding;
Almost had me falling of my chair when i read the bit about the one positive aspect, symbolising a arch. Oh the shame.
it is rubbish. But look, this is a big leap for MS. It probably took months of position-papers before they could take the brave leap of not calling it “Windows Live Search Live, Bing Edition” or something
Love it, “Windows Live Search Live, Bing Edition”
Wow, tens of thousands of employees at Microsoft. You’d think one of them might have had a five-year-old who might have done some crayon art or something… anything! Bing needs some bling.
Its astonishing isn’t it, that given the complete wealth of resources at their supposed disposal, they can fail so catastrophically at what should be a simple clean and bold logo. “MicroLoosers”
Agree with you saying that any decent designer could come up with better than that in 10 mins in Illustrator. I’m not an ‘MS hater’ but they’ve really done an awful job on this..
Are you serious about your comic sans option?… I believe that is a joke just like the original logo…
I think they made it on PC… (sorry guys dont want to start a famous PC vs MAC war) – any how I’m already a big fan of PC
Semi series with the Comic Sans version, given it’s the Microsoft Edition of the font, seems kinda relevant don’t you think?
This is the first export from their new program, “Microsoft Logo Maker”. Works just like all their other programs, does the job, not not very well.
Where can one get a copy of this “Microsoft Logo Maker”, sounds a great idea.
Are their Amateur and Professional Designer Editions?
the logo is like any other logo, doesn’t stand out enough, & I’ve been calling it Bling!
The logo is simply ugly and I’m surprised that there aren’t more bloggers writing about that. The discoverbling.com site is also ugly as hell.
I guess most people can’t be arsed to waste time writing about something so hideous. I just get a kick out of it. :)
I hope for Microsoft’s sake, that there wasn’t much capital spent on such a disgrace to everything that design represents. If design is supposed to be a form of language, then Microsoft is speaking Spanish to an English only audience.
If design is a language then Microsoft only speaks Klingon.
lol, great comment :D
You have never made me laugh so hard! At first, I kinda liked the logo, but reflecting upon it, it does suck.
It would be really cute if the logo had some movement to it. I mean, when you hear ::bing!:: you think of something jumping around.
This logo should be way more vibrant. Oh those funny MS people.
What worries me is the bit where you said “at first I kinda liked it”. We need to talk, you and I. :)
And presumably, when you infer ‘funny MS people’, Im assuming you mean ‘funny’ odd, rather than ‘funny’ ha ha. Although I guess both are viable options.
Hmmm yeah very boring logo, though not as bad as some logos out there (cough, london 2012!) I don’t know why MS are bothering with a search engine, everyone uses google and this is once again MS copying ideas.
It would be better to be boring, but boring its far from being. It’s just crap.
But yes, why they are trying to compete? May be a novelty features, but will just go the way of Excite, yahoo search, always the runners up.
They’re just copying Google. They must think that as long as they also use a poorly designed logo Bing will turn out a success.
On a side note; you hate Comic Sans because it’s an ugly font that is widely used. This means that most people think it looks cool and fun. I hate it as much as the next DESIGNER, but not everyone is a designer and think the way they do.
I like Comic Sans…
I would like to see a Comic Serif and Comic Slab version…
They’re just copying Google? Now we’re just being typical Microsoft bashers, hating the logo for the sake of hating it.
The logo is irrelevant. All that matters is the search results—but I am willing to predict they suck too
The logo is far from being irrelevant. It shapes how Bing, the service, the company are perceived. For it to be successful, every part of the Bing brand must be top-notch, otherwise they have no hope of competing with Google.
IF they can’t be seen to take something as crucial as the identity seriously, given their resources, they have no right to succeed. It’s just downright lazy and in today’s brand and identity conscious climate, a bad mistake
What´s a “bing” anyway? I keep thinking about Chandler Bing. Maybe I just watch too much tv.
It´s better than than the London Olympics 2012 though. Maybe logo´s are supposed to be badly crafted these days. I dunno.
A Bing is like a Boing, but without the ‘o’.
Be great if logo trends are to go towards the utter crap. Make my life a heck of lot easier. Still charge a fortune tho ofcourse.
I utterly hate this logo from the moment it burned into my screen. Combine it with the tasteless stock-photo background and you have a complete hideous design.
I simply can’t understand how a company with almost unlimited capital can’t hire a good designer. How hard can it be? Alot of great designers would probably do the job pretty at low cost just for getting some publicity.
I’ve posted a few words here :)
drop a comment if you like it
http://logoblink.com/2009/05/29/ms-bing-logo/
Nice post actually, at least it’s mature unlike my cowardly rant. :) Didn’t realise there were so many existing Bing logos, all of which are better than MS. Well, almost.
Will link to your post in this post, just to even things out a little bit. :)
That logo is fabulously crap, and I’m embarrassed that it was designed by my former employer.
They really shouldn’t get involved with things they know nothing about, namely graphic design.
You are amongst friends here, we will not condone you for previously working for Microsoft. Not much anyway…
I think the bing logo is going to be attacked precisely because tis Microsoft (or should I say, not Apple?) when there are plenty of worse logos out there which arent being panned, because of who made them.
This is not entirely true. Microsoft are in the spotlight due to who they are. They they fore need to deal with all the comes with being famous.
Specifiacally taking identity design a little more seriously with a product that is meant to compete with Google.
I think any company that had come up with this pile of dog poo would have seen similar slating, just not with the motivation and enthusiasm we have for slatting Microsoft. :)
I agree with you Tom, 100%.
Comments like:
“What´s a “bing” anyway? I keep thinking about Chandler Bing”
or
“All that matters is the search results—but I am willing to predict they suck too.”
These kinds of comments only prove Tom’s point.
There are ofcourse many logos of poor quality out there, but it’s rare for such a huge company to fail so badly on such an important product.
You just can’t assume because you are Microsoft that you can get away with anything. People ARE fussy when it comes to Brand Identity, more so now than ever.
As I said, it’s a crap logo. Doesn’t matter who did it, it still is crap. The fact MS did it for this new search engine, that is mean to compete with Google is even more outstanding.
And yes, they need to look at companies like Apple who know about brand identity, more so, what turns the customers on.
You can’t get away with creating such poor identities if you are market leader. It’s commercial suicide.
Simple, and guaranteed to “stick” over time :-) Maybe it’s the Microsoft bit people have the problem with? ;-)
Its gonna stick OK… :)
I suppose this is the only time I will take a look at the logo at all, so at least it makes an impression.
The impression is, by the way, that no designer was used in the making of this logo. An account manager of Microsoft asked around for some prices, decided that those sites where you get 250.000 designs for $ 50 would give away the secret and just made the darn thing himself. Who would ever see the difference. Pity though he could not work out how those designer get those bevels and shadows out of their computers. That cracked Photoshop kept crashing on him.
The logo is identical to the Lively by Google logo. Go check it out.
Epic fail! The search engine is good, and I personally liked the Live™ brand. They should’ve made search more powerful under the same brand. Another historical MS failure!
The name Bing is even worse, I can’t believe this.
The ‘Live’ brand was actually a great idea I thought, certainly in comparison to what they have now.
I see a huge reversal in the near future. It’s not uncommon for failed rebrands to revert to the previous identity.
Lets see…
It looks very similar to the logo on http://www.bingmail.com.au which apparently used to be bing.com
There are many Bing logos out there, this one included and for that reason, it’s another branding failure.
Zero out of ten for originality for brand name. And zero a gazillion points for a bad visual representation of it.
This is truly an embarassment to Microsoft and they should re-design it as soon as possible. Some of my thoughts: http://www.joshuardavis.com/2009/06/microsofts-new-bing-logo-is-epic-fail.html
To my eye the typography here is awful.
The massive x height and short acender on the B make the whole thing look like someone stretched it in photoshop. The counter in the B looks awful and the top of the B and N are identical.
Why is the top of the dot on the i cut off?
An argument could be made that the kerning is lazy to “ng” is much closer than any of the other pairs. The G also looks much smaller than the “bin” part of the logo and out of balance.
“bing” is a fun exiting kind of word, the logo has absolutly no personality at all. Its onomatopia for gods sake microsoft inject something into it.
“Bing” = WORST LOGO EVER. Did they think Google’s search excellence came from a bad logo? If so, Microsoft is the new search king.
I think the tag ‘worst logo ever’ is a bit harsh, but only ever so slightly. In terms of what they are trying to create, a google brand beating search engine, then the logo/identity is an utter failure.
If it was a logo for some dodgy corner shop then the criticism of it would be less of course.
What we have here is a market leader who have just failed to realise and implement the importance of a brand identity that creates interest rather than displeasure.
A brand needs to be liked by its users, not hated and slammed at it’s birth.
Microsoft have basically insulted the majority of it’s customer base based on it’s inability to reach out with a ‘winning’ logo.
First off, this is my first post here, and I was encouraged by all the replies by you, Graham. It’s great to see a blogger involved with their comments thread.
I agree the logo is lacking, I am curious, mostly from a typography standpoint, what details throw you so much. You clearly hate it, and I agree, but you don’t mention a single concept or principle to justify your position. I am pretty new to web design and find typography interesting, so it would really be helpful to see a more analytical critique.
My ideas: the spacing is not even, and it bothers me that the loops of the “b” and “g” are not the same size. The font is too clean to not be even. I also think the orange dot on the “i” (I know it actually has a name…?) is either under emphasized, or needs to be altered in some simple manner.
Would love to hear your typographical analysis!
– Erik
PS, put my 5 minute (literally) version in the web link, feel free to rip it apart too!
I’ll be th first to put my hands up and say that previously I have not been the best at responding to clients, so it’s a new resolution for me.
Especially now I have these threaded comments which makes it so much more interesting to reply etc.
This posy was purposefully a very critical post, frankly had no intention to waste much time on it.
But the previous comments have really picked out all thats wrong with it technically anyway, then there is just that I hate the look of it anyway, technically stuff aside.
Also you are spot on with your own views, it’s just bad. It’s bad enough to be able to just say it’s bad for badness sake. :)
I’m surprised no one has mentioned that it is a stretched/distorted bastardization of the ITC Kabel Typeface ( a favorite of the 80s and 90s ) and ITC Bauhaus: See for yourself
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/itc-bauhaus/
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/itc-kabel/
now i understand why the font gets so awfully familiar to me. I just hope they just didn’t distort the font :S
i don’t know what bing is, and this logo, surely don’t help me get an idea nor a ballpark figure. the logo itself as a TM needs to improve.
I swear that it looks like popup, I swear I’ve seen that font somewhere. Makes me think the guys at Creative might have helped them with the design…
Apparently I’m big into swearing.
It’s not a bad logo…you have complimentary opposing colors, a simple font (by the way your comic sans looks worse…did anyone notice how bad that looked) and not a horrrible first impression of the product. Now I’m comparing Microsofts previous failures into the search engine market not compared to Google…at least not yet, as I’ve only be binging(stupid f’n name by the way) for 10 minutes and I’ve been googling for years…
I was being sarcastic with my Comic Sans version… :)
For those of us in the sarcastically challenged community and struggle with underdeveloped sarcasm on a daily basis, it’s very difficult to spot sarcasm…perhaps you should let us know with a neon sign. You have to understand…the blind get a cane, the deaf have sign language…but there is no help for the sarcastically challenged. By the way I am also very unobservant and just now realized that this logo critique is coming from someone that knows about logo design…which obviously I don’t. I’m just “Joe 6-pack” observing the logo casually.
Come on Graham, not a bad logo? Look at that sloppy kerning and expanded letter forms. Marvel how the “tm” has nowhere to go. “Let’s just shrink it down and try to hide it.” And what an original corporate color pallete they’ve used. It’s obvious the logo was an internal rush job. Everything about this logo is a fail.
Great post Graham!
A bit delayed but here’s the link to my two-penneth about this mess of a logo:
http://www.postmodem.co.uk/?p=47
;o)
I think this Bing is load of crap. The censorship that already is uncovered is a disgrace and shame on Microsoft for being part of it.
This is what separates the artists from the designers. It’s not typography, it’s art… look again.
Im also a fine art artist, and I don’t see anything here that is remotely acceptable, as art or design.
The moment you beak rules for a logo, when it’s all typographic, you loose the right to fall back on a art based excuse. Technically it’s poor and aesthetically it’s even worse.
Im not sure how one can say the Bing Logo is art, I really struggle with that definition.
I think your replacement logo looks terrible. It’s reminiscent of… “I don’t take your search seriously”, or “My business is shaky”. Their logo isn’t great, but it’s way ahead of your “ideal”.
Jeff : I was hoping it would be blatantly obvious that I was being sarcastic with using one of the worse fonts around, Comic Sans MS (stands for Microsoft), so a spot of irony there for added measure.
You’re a bit of a cry baby. Perhaps you could give some constructive feedback instead of all the whingeing and sarcasm.
And who are you to decide what is acceptable as art. If you were an artist you would be more open minded.
That being said, they should take a long, hard look at what Apple is doing right. On so many levels.
Jillian : As the beginning of the post mentions, this post is not meant to be constructive. That’s the whole point. Its meant to be sarcastic, juvenile and ironic. It’s for a giggle, not to be taken clinically seriously. Not all posts need to be careful weighed up in order to get feedback. The best bit about this post are the comments left, except yours of course.
This post is looking at it loosely from a logo design perspective. If you took time to read what I do for a living then you would see that clear as day. This is not an art blog or high class magazine. This is just a silly rant, and there is emphasis here on silly and sarcastic.
And where the hell are people getting off now referring the Bing Logo as art? People, you seriously need to consider what you believe art to be when looking at it from a logo design perspective. A technically poor corporate logo and identity this is.
I am using my judgment and ’subjective’ taste to say categorically, the Bing Logo is crap and not art. Are you therefore saying it is? If so, please explain how. Thanks.
Maybe the Microsoft board wanted it to be “Bling” but the designer accidently typed “Bing” instead. Then they just settled with that. lol
If it was Bling then they re need to look up the meaning of the damn word, and in this case, assess what Bing could mean also. All very generic and ‘guh’. :) Even a ‘meh’.
It looks so odd – stands out like a sore thumb on the Microsoft website. It’s terrible, to put it lightly. They did a great job with the backgrounds on the Bing website, but the logo just kills it. Terrible.
If they are to keep with the Bing photo backgrounds, then some adjustments to the logo is all thats needed just to make it bearable.
Don’t bastardise the font and have it either white or black out of the photos. That would make a huge difference.
sorry if i’m reiterating someone else’s post (there were too many to read through) – i agree that it’s somewhat less than what you’d expect from a company like microsoft. i particularly hate the font. i don’t mind the concept as much – the whole “less is more” thing has been pretty hot for a while, and clearly what they were going for.
but, yes, it’s ugly and disappointing. utterly underwhelming.
Yeah, as I commented just earlier, comment above.
All it needs is some minor tweaks to make a technically poor logo at least technically correct, if not inspiring. And change the color palette to mono for the coloured background.
Holy Jesus. I have been looking for a forum like this to vent. I run a tiny, eeny, weeny business and if our marketing girl came to me with something like this I would die. It beggars belief that a company that spends so much each year on marketing can a) be so boring as to attempt to copy the simplicity of Google’s logo and b) f*ck it up soooo badly in the process. What planet are the employees at MS living on? Absolutely bizarre.
Yeah, the first time I saw the logo, I was like, are you kidding me. Instantly, I knew it was a poorly designed logo. Anybody who knows anything about type and logo design can tell that the type in the logo looks squashed – proportionally incorrect. It really looks like someone at Microsoft downloaded one of those free fonts and started messing around with it – probably some CEO who has a child that fancies themselves a designer – and then some how this piece ‘o’ crap made it all the way to the final decision phase – I mean who’s working for Microsoft these day that would approve this crap. The CD on the project should be fired.
I think the designers read the name wrong and were going for the ‘boing’ effect, so a squashed font.
The first thing I noticed is the squashed font, so I noticed a fault immediately before others started picking out other faults that I now see when mentioned.
I haven’t read all the messages here, but I’ve just noticed the top of the dot on the i is clipped also as if the person saving the jpeg made a mistake.
I’d be surprised if a professional with any experienced created this.
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Sheesh dude, not to be mean or anything – but look at YOUR logo!
I frequently look at my logo, thanks for the advice. :)
OMG – you got all defensive. About your crap logo :-)
Bite me.
So, before things get out of hand with people leaving ‘daft’ comments, and humorous replies get mistaken for vindictiveness, comments closed.
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