Microsoft Office 365 Icons Updated With New Design to Reflect Cloud-Oriented Approach

Microsoft on Thursday announced new, redesigned icons for all Office 365 applications to reflect a modern real-time and cloud-based approach for the Redmond giant. The company announced that the redesigned Office icons come as part of its focus towards pushing Office as a collaborative suite platform that allows users to access it in real-time the products from any device anywhere. The new icons have been rolled out for Office 365 apps including Outlook, OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint, Teams, Skype, and Yammer.

To recall, icons for apps in Microsoft Office 365 were last redesigned back in 2013 when the tech giant had still largely been focusing on its traditional products. However, now with a cloud-oriented and enterprise approach, Microsoft has announced a visual redesign for its icons to reflect just that.

“Colour differentiates apps and creates personality, and for the new icons we chose hues that are bolder, lighter and friendlier - a nod to how Office has evolved,” said Jon Friedman, head of Microsoft Office design in a blog post on Thursday. Friedman states that while each of the icons has a “unique and identifiable symbol”, all of them are connected to form a collective suite.

One of the major design changes in the new icons is that the letter and symbol in them have been decoupled creating two panels instead of one. This adds depth to the icon design, helping in possible future 3D implementation. The document outline in Microsoft Word and the spreadsheet outline in Excel make way for lines of text in the Word icon and individual cells in the Excel icon.

Lastly, Microsoft has changed the letter-to-symbol ratio to emphasise the symbol instead of the letter in each Office 365 app icon. The new icons will start rolling out across platforms in the coming few months, with mobile and Web getting it first. This development does not bring any functional updates to any of the Office 365 apps.

Back in June this year, Microsoft had announced certain design changes for the Office 365 suite including a simplified command ribbon, slight modification in icons and colour schemes, and better search functionality.