Google Logo: Old and New Compared
How Google’s old Catull wordmark differs from the 2015 Product Sans logo and four-color G, and what that means for vector identity work.
Contents
What you are comparing
The usual “old versus new” Google logo question is a comparison of two official wordmarks: the Catull serif logotype used for years as the primary brand, and the geometric sans-serif wordmark introduced in the 2015 identity refresh, together with the four-color capital G that now stands in for the full name at small sizes. That is a product-identity comparison, not a comparison of Google Doodles, temporary campaign lockups, or third-party recreations.
Scope matters because Google’s public face is a system, not a single drawing. The six-letter wordmark (G-o-o-g-l-e) is the nameplate. The four-color G is a companion icon built from the same palette. Older marks also exist in slightly different finishes—beveled or shadowed versions earlier, then a flatter serif wordmark—so “the old logo” is best treated as the Catull-era wordmark family rather than one frozen file. Unofficial SVGs, icon packs, and filename suffixes such as “.svg” do not prove that a file is an official vector master or that it may be reused.
Observable differences in the wordmark
The older wordmark is a serif logotype. Its most recognizable letter is the lowercase g: a two-storey form with a closed bowl and a prominent ear and spur, sitting in a typeface historically identified as Catull. Adjacent letters carry the same classical finish—bracketed or wedge-like terminals, a two-storey a is not in play here, but the e has a distinctive crossbar and aperture, and the l reads as a seriffed stem rather than a plain stick. The overall rhythm feels bookish and slightly condensed, closer to a print masthead than to a UI label.
The 2015 wordmark is a geometric sans serif, publicly associated with Google’s Product Sans family. Serifs disappear. The g becomes a single-storey, almost circular bowl with a simple descender; the e opens into a round counter with a horizontal bar; the l is a vertical stroke without a slab or hook. Curves look compass-drawn rather than calligraphic. Letter spacing is more even and the word sits as a row of related circles and stems, which is why the new mark holds up when it is reduced to a toolbar, a phone header, or a favicon-adjacent lockup.
Color sequence is the continuity that makes both marks read as Google at a glance. In both eras the letters are typically colored blue, red, yellow, blue, green, red across G-o-o-g-l-e. The new system keeps that order while simplifying the paint: flat, even fills instead of the highlights, bevels, and drop shadows that appeared on earlier raster presentations of the serif mark. A later flattened serif version already pointed in that direction; the 2015 change completed the move from dimensional lettering to a two-dimensional identity.
| Feature | Older wordmark (Catull era) | 2015 wordmark and G |
| Type classification | Serif logotype with classical terminals | Geometric sans serif |
| Signature letter | Two-storey g with ear and spur | Single-storey g with circular bowl |
| Surface treatment | Often beveled, shaded, or given a drop shadow in older presentations; later flattened | Flat color fills, no modeled highlight |
| Letter color order | Blue, red, yellow, blue, green, red | Same six-letter color order |
| Small-size stand-in | Primarily the full wordmark, sometimes cropped or stacked awkwardly | Four-color G icon designed as the compact mark |
| Typical use context | Print, early web headers, search home page as a masthead | Screens, apps, wearables, and mixed-size product UI |
The four-color G as a new asset, not a cropped wordmark
The capital G introduced with the 2015 system is a separate drawing. It is a near-circular capital with a horizontal arm, divided into four color segments that echo the wordmark palette: blue, red, yellow, and green. It is not a cropped first letter of the old serif G, and it is not a monochrome glyph with a fill swapped in. Treating it as a one-letter extract of the six-letter wordmark will break both proportion and color logic.
In practice the G is the mark you meet in app icons, avatars, and tight UI chrome, while the wordmark remains the nameplate on search and marketing surfaces. A vector workflow that needs “the Google logo” has to decide which of those two official roles is required. Substituting one for the other is a layout error, not a style preference.
What the redesign implies for vector work
Geometry, not decoration, is the main production difference. The old wordmark rewards careful handling of serifs, ink traps, and the g’s ear: those details collapse or blob if the paths are over-simplified, auto-traced from a screenshot, or scaled without optical correction. The new wordmark rewards consistent stroke terminals, circular bowls, and even counters. If a “Product Sans” recreation has a two-storey g, or an “old Google” file has a single-storey g, the file is the wrong era regardless of how it is named.
Flat color also changes how files should be built. A faithful new-system vector is typically a set of filled letter shapes (or a filled G with four color regions), not a logo with inner highlights, outer glows, or simulated 3D. Older presentations that showed bevel and shadow were often raster effects around the letterforms; rebuilding those as extra vector meshes is a reconstruction choice, not proof of an official master. Do not treat a downloadable SVG, a PNG with a transparent background, or a “vector” label in a filename as evidence of true outline geometry or of permission to use the mark.
- Match era to letter construction: serif two-storey g for the old nameplate; geometric single-storey g for the current wordmark.
- Keep the six-letter color order unless you are drawing the four-color G, which uses a four-segment palette on one character.
- Use the wordmark where the name must be read; use the G where the identity must survive at icon size.
- Prefer official outline artwork over auto-traced screenshots; tracing invents points and weights that the original drawing may not have.
- Availability of a file is not a license. Brand use is controlled by Google’s trademark and brand rules, which are separate from how the artwork looks.
How to reach a working conclusion
If the task is to tell the versions apart, look first at the g, then at serifs, then at whether a four-color G exists as a companion. Those three checks separate the Catull-era nameplate from the 2015 system without needing a side-by-side pixel measurement. If the task is to pick an asset for a layout, choose the current wordmark for contemporary product and marketing contexts, the current G for compact UI, and the older serif wordmark only when the brief is explicitly historical—an archive piece, a redesign case study, or a period recreation.
Precise outline coordinates, official stroke weights, and exact color values in a given colorspace are not established in this comparison and should be taken from current official brand artwork rather than guessed from memory or from a raster capture. Intermediate pre-2015 flattenings of the serif mark, regional or product-specific lockups, and animated or doodle variants sit outside the core old-versus-new wordmark pair and should be labeled as such if they appear in a file set.