Google's inconsistent design philosophy bugs me
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Check out these Google sites.
The good sites all seem to have something in common and that is they are related to Chrome in some way so I wonder if the Chrome team has a super design team, while everything else across Google is done by engineers. Either way I hate the experience of seeing a decent site then one click away on the same domain I will come across a crummy design.
I know Google is a large organization, but does this make any sense at all? In contrast, Twitter is a company more based around designers and it shows on every page that they put up. Granted they have pages and sections to worry about than Google right now, but it's nice to see a company place heavy emphasis on the design of their complete web presence. -
I never noticed it before, but it is rather bothersome. It's like all those sites have entirely different design teams (or not design teams, in the case of Chromium), they don't communicate, and they don't follow any sort of branding guidelines. They all look like websites for different companies rather than falling under the umbrella of a single entity. Branding fail.
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Did someone look at the Apple store and go 'that' and the designer just go 'ok I have one suggestion to make it look really not like it... make it in blue' then phone it in?
I also hadn't noticed the stark variations it's actually quite mind boggling. Surely there must in such a behemoth be some design structure that would be responsible to not let this happen. Maybe that is the issue though it's too big to know what right hand doing. -
How bad-ass would Google look if they put the Think Quarterly design team in charge of all their projects?
I actually find it refreshing that Google are putting out a few products/projects now where design is obviously given a high priority. For so long they were borderline anti-design. Before Doug Bowman joined Google they basically didn't have a design team (at least that's the way he tells it), and in the end he found the environment too stifling to function effectively as a designer:
http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
And now he's at Twitter, which as @Scrivs says is reknowned for their attention to design. -
Google's been having issues with this forever. Even way back, their UI for core products like mail or calendar used to differ wildly.
Obviously they're in an enormous transition. It's not easy to differentiate between Google products and Google 'projects'. Chromebooks, Android, YouTube... in a way, they're all Google but yet they're not.
I don't necessarily mind having separate experimental web sites (with a URL not on the Google domain) to look different, but some consistency in look and feel would certainly be beneficial.
As far as chromium.org goes, I'm not sure how that is even a true Google project, seeing that both the browser as well as the OS now are taking very different directions.
PS Just count your blessings you don't live in the Linux universe; you wouldn't want to know how many variations there are even within say Ubuntu. -
I'm definitely not looking for the same look across all of these sites, but it would be good to see the same design attention given to all sites. I just came across another one today that is wonderful in all the ways that other Google designs are not. Guide to the App Galaxy makes me wonder if Google is contracting out these designs or they really do have design superstars in house.
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@Scrivs Ah, I see. Misunderstood. Still not sure how Chromium would be part of that (although it too deserves a great website) but the App Store could definitely do with some overhauling.
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Finally have an answer as to why things are the way they are at Google.
Levy reports that with Emerald Sea (again, now Google+), Hertzfeld was given free reign to “flex his creative muscles” for the first time within Google. While traditionally, Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page has been opposed to lavish designs because he’s obsessed with product speed, he signed off on Hertzfeld’s work.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/28/google-plus-design-andy-hertzfeld/ -
I'm not sure if all of those sites were made by in-house teams.
I know they work with some advertising agencies, like BBH and Glue, in London, as you can see in this link.
http://bbh-labs.com/google-chrome-behind-the-scenes
Seems like Google do some projects internally and hire other companies/agencies/whatever to do the other ones, and there's the difference, perhaps.
