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Microsofts devotion to its Metro design aesthetic doesnt stop at Windows 8, Windows Phone and the most recent Xbox Dashboard: it also influenced the new Windows 8 logo.
We realized an evolution of our logo would better reflect our Metro style design principles, Sam Moreau, principal director of Microsofts User Experience for Windows, wrote in a Feb. 17 posting on The Windows Blog.
Unlike previous iterations of the Windows logo, which embraced wavy lines to the point where people mistook it for a flag, the revised Windows 8 logo is clearly, well, a window. If you look back at the origins of the logo you see that it really was meant to be a window, he wrote. We did less of a re-design and more to return it to its original meaning and bring Windows back to its roots.
Its perhaps ironic that, despite Windows logo returning to its roots, Windows 8 represents something of a radical deviation from the traditional Windows user interface. In a bid to run effectively on both tablets and PCs, Windows 8 features a Metro-style “start” screen of colorful tiles linked to applicationsthe better to tap and swipe, if the device running the OS happens to feature a touch-screen. Power users and those who want the old-style Windows experience can flip from there to a fully actualized desktop, which has undergone some tweaks of its own.
Microsoft executives claim that Windows 8 will offer no compromises in either its tablet or traditional PC iterations. Indeed, Windows on ARM (the architecture that powers many of todays mobile devices and that Microsoft has started referring to using the acronym WOA) will feature a modified version of Office 15, the upcoming version of Microsofts Office software. Within the Windows desktop, WOA includes desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, code-named Office 15, Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsofts Windows and Windows Live division, wrote in a Feb. 9 posting on the corporate Building Windows 8 blog. WOA will be a no-compromise product for people who want to have the full benefits of familiar Office productivity software and compatibility.
Because of its presence on tablets, Apple will face competition from Apples iPad and a big family of Google Android devices. Even on PCs, where the Windows franchise has long dominated, Microsoft will need to overcome many users likely reluctance to upgrade from Windows 7. However it fares in those battles, at least Microsoft will have a nifty new logo.