The Only Thing Constant

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  I'm not usually in the loop with trends, but the subject for this blog post was something I could hardly help notice.
  This week, the new logo for Google was unveiled. I saw it as soon as I opened my browser (I'm one of the people who has Google as their homepage). My reaction? Meh.
  Apparently, a lot of other people were disturbed. And that's putting it mildly. The New Yorker, in its Culture portion, discussed the merits of the old logo, piling evidence about how the new logo doesn't cut it.
  I'm not a Philistine, but I was amused by the reaction that people had. I'd expect this level of reaction if the Mona Lisa was restored in the style of, say, Pollock (which would really be a sight to see). I mean, it's just a logo.
  Then again, maybe it's something deeper than "just a logo." Maybe people dislike change. Google hasn't been in existence for long, but it has made a big impact on people's lives. Or maybe there are people who just don't like non-serif fonts.
   I refuse to quote that tired old line about change. However, the (slight) furor over a household name changing its logo's font made me think about how people dislike being threatened. The article in The New Yorker struck me a lot--there was a line there, which I quote, "The new logo retains the rainbow of colors but sheds the grown-up curlicues: it now evokes children's refrigerator magnets, McDonald's french fries, Comic Sans." I do not mean threatened in the physical sense, nor in another sense that implies assault; I am using threatened in the sense of people's idea of something being changed.
   I wonder why the article struck me. Maybe it was because of the author's scathing stripping-down of the new logo. Maybe it was the realization that anyone can make much ado over nothing. Maybe it's that every one of us has a different concept of what "nothing" is.
   I still don't care about the logo, though.








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