In anticipation of significant new releases across its expansive portfolio of product offerings, Microsoft has unveiled a new logo, the first major update in 25 years.From Windows 8 to Windows Phone 8 to Xbox services to the next version of Office, you will see a common look and feel across these products providing a familiar and seamless experience on PCs, phones, tablets and TVs. This wave of new releases is not only a reimagining of our most popular products, but also represents a new era for Microsoft, so our logo should evolve to visually accentuate this new beginning.

The original 1987 logo

The design team at the Seattle-based tech juggernaut has reduced the iconic 'waving' flag ideograph into a rather more abstract array of four squares, Zen-like but for their colors. Similarly, the typographical decision to replace italicized Helvetica Black with Segoe feels a bit fresher, in keeping with contemporary brand identities.

Starting today, you'll see the new Microsoft logo being used prominently. It will be used on Microsoft.com—the 10th most visited website in the world. It is in three of our Microsoft retail stores today (Boston, Seattle's University Village and Bellevue, Wash.) and will shine brightly in all our stores over the next few months. It will sign off all of our television ads globally. And it will support our products across various forms of marketing. Fully implementing a change like this takes time, so there may be other instances where you will see the old logo being used for some time.

We're excited about the new logo, but more importantly about this new era in which we're reimagining how our products can help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.

For a bit of commentary, our friend Don Lehman's posted a bit of incisive industry insight into the new logo over at his Tumblog: "It's a little generic, but nice looking. It's clean and simple. It looks the way you would expect a Microsoft logo from 2012 would look like. Most people won't know there was change. That's a good thing." (It's also worth checking out the 'Microsoft Inc. Logo History' sidebar on Wikipedia.)

Throwback to 1982

via Laughing Squid