Google Arts & CultureCopied

Google Arts & Culture is the company's portal to artwork and history, bringing, as 9to5Google's Kyle Bradshaw put it, the learning experience of a museum into your home. For years its icon matched that idea literally: a Material Design entrance to a museum, with cues taken from the British Museum, its marble pillars and angled roof.

On 11 January 2023 that changed. Bradshaw reported that the app ditched the classic icon for something more modern, focused on the ampersand in the app's name, arriving first on Android in version 9.5 via the Play Store. 9to5Google had been first to report the rebrand the previous year. Bradshaw offered his own reading, flagged as opinion: the ampersand speaks to how the app is a digital museum and more, with activities, the doppelgänger search through historic artworks, and Art Filters that make your photos look like masterpieces. He also noted Google's intention behind the logo was up for debate, and that, despite Google's push for Material You themed icons in Android 13, the new icon was still a full colour image, while store listings had not yet been updated.

It did not stay put. Android Police's Chandraveer Mathur wrote in August 2023 that the app had already tried on three different icons that year: Google replaced the classic blue and white icon with a four colour icon like Search and everything else, then swapped it for a black and white one. That black and white mark stayed as the app received a full Material You redesign, with a card layout, dynamic theming, pill shaped buttons and three tabs called Explore, Play and Inspire.

The ampersand is the right idea. A museum facade describes a building; an ampersand describes connection, and it is drawn straight from the name, which is what good marks do. But three icons in about seven months is not a rebrand so much as a public sketchbook. Dressing the ampersand in the four Google colours first tied a cultural product to the corporate system, and stepping back to black and white suggests someone realised that art needs a quieter frame. The result is better than the pillars. The process looked indecisive.