The Inside Scoop on Google's Visual Design Guidelines

A group of Google designers have shared the various quirks and guidelines behind the tech giant's visual aesthetics, giving us a glimpse at how Google works to keep a coherent look across its products.

In a two-part project posted on online portfolio site Behance, Google's Roger Oddone, Yan Yan, Zachary Gibson and Christopher Bettig said their "solid, yet flexible, set of guidelines" have been helping both internal designers and vendors produce work that supports the company's brand identity. The guide includes tips for designing logos, icons, illustrations and infographics.

According to the guidelines, Google likes its product icons to be "highly simplified, exaggerated and caricatured in nature so that they are appropriate for use at small sizes." The company's new icons are also geometric shapes that are front-facing, with straight, hard shadows.

The guidelines also detail specific color palettes that are acceptable to use in logos and user interface designs, with Google-specific yellow, blue, red and green colors and combinations.

Check out the Google-y guidelines yourself on Behance: Here's Part 1 and Part 2.

Google's simple approach to aesthetics has a modern feel that is somewhat similar to Apple's newly-unveiled look for iOS 7. Under the direction of well-known Apple Senior Vice President of Design Jonathan Ive, the aesthetic for iOS 7 ditches details like Game Center's green felt — a "skeuomorphic" look seen in earlier iOS versions — for a flatter, cleaner look.

"I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity, in clarity, in efficiency," Ive said, during a video played at Monday's WWDC keynote event in San Francisco. "True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter ... it's about bringing order to complexity."

That's why Ive said Apple applied a "coherent" look across iOS 7 and designed new typography and icons.

What do you think about the Google design guidelines? What about the aesthetics from Apple? Facebook? Other tech companies? Let us know in the comments.

Source : mashable