July 7, 2009

Anniversary of the Publication of Pinocchio

Unless you happened to be Googling from Italy today, you weren’t subjected to this mockery of the good Google name. This logo, commemorating the anniversary of one of the worst books ever, was an Italian exclusive, and as a result it reeks of European decadence.

Where to begin with my deconstruction of this logo? For starters, the washed-out color palette, while highly symbolic of the washed-up nature of whoever designed this Google logo, gives the piece an overall air of loneliness, despair and isolation. There’s nothing whimsical, magical or even remotely pleasant about this tribute to an icon of childhood and imagination. But maybe that’s just not how they view Pinocchio in the land of pasta, mustaches and ill-informed stereotypes.

The real problem here is that the logo is completely illegible. Maybe they have a different alphabet in Italy, or maybe they refer to Google as “LROBAQ” (which is how I read it) but here in the English-speaking world a painted red block does not look like an “e.” There’s not a single letter in this entire Google logo that looks like it’s supposed to; in fact, at first I thought this was not a holiday Google logo at all but rather an Ask Jeeves logo (because it sucks).

Today’s Rating: G (out of a possible GOOGLE)

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