In late 2019, Microsoft revealed a brand new set of icon designs, including one for the Office experience. The timing of this brand evolution was in sync with the reveal of the brand new Office mobile app, which combines Word, Excel and PowerPoint with uniquely mobile ways that make document creation easier.
A year before, as we began the redesign process for the Office icon, we were eager to simply crack open Adobe Illustrator and begin generating ideas. Although we did some of that, we also discovered that the challenges of revisiting such a widely known icon were actually much larger than we had expected. After all, for many, it represented a beloved and familiar set of creation tools that had been around since the 1980's.
Office icon evolution over many decades.
With many variations of the icon pinned across our design studio and research results starting to fill our inboxes, we began to collectively gravitate towards the familiar threshold shape that our customers were already accustomed to. We added depth, a richer color palette and softer, friendlier silhouette to align its aesthetics with our other icons.
Below are just a few among the many shapes we explored over many weeks of iteration. These largely revolved around the metaphor of an opening, a vessel or a container for creation tools.
For the launch of the Office mobile app (seen above), I had a chance to direct this UX film with Buck Design. The general motivation was to celebrate the unification of 3 iconic apps into one, as well as to show off analog-to-digital capabilities such as “Image to table” make real-world content easily editable as a digital document.
In retrospect, this project wasn't all that different from the smaller brand assignments I had worked on early in my career. It took some creativity, attention to detail and rigor, as well as some courage and gut instinct.
Ultimately what really set this apart from my previous experiences was all the cross-team collaboration. Instead of relying on a traditional design and approval processes, we inspired each other along the way and depended heavily on our collective insights, intuition, experience and candor.
I'll let you be the judge of the final result, but I am incredibly proud of this group of people below and excited about where the Office experience along with its brand new icon we created together.
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Creative Direction: Jon Friedman and Nando Costa
Images & Videos: Alexis Copeland, Michael Yoon, Ryan Gagnier, and Buck Design.
Full Project Credits: Alberto Cerriteno, Annice Jumani, Austin Taylor, Becky Brown, Bo Smith, Burns Montgomery, David Hose, David Huang, Jon Friedman, Lauren Keckley, Mistelle Taylor, Nando Costa, Phil Evans, Sunmin Chung, Sven Seger, Therese Okraku, Tim Garret and Tracy Childers.
