Microsoft Office is getting brand new icons

Microsoft has redesigned its Office program icons five years after its previous update.

The company believes that with the fast paced and diversified digital world in the present day, Office has evolved into a “collaborative suite”.

“As a signal to our customers, we’ve evolved our Office icons to reflect these significant product changes,” said Microsoft in an announcement.

While the colours remain true to their corresponding Office programmes, the hues are described as “bolder, lighter and friendlier”.

“Our design solution was to decouple the letter and the symbol in the icons, essentially creating two panels,” the company explains.

Indeed, the new icons feature a small letter that symbolises the name of the program, sitting above a simple shape representing its contents. That is; lines for Word, cells for Excel, pie charts for PowerPoint and so on.

“By focusing on the content rather than any specific format, these icons embody the collaborative nature of the apps they represent.”

The new icons will launch on mobile and web Office products first, and roll out to all users over the next few months.

Feature image: Microsoft Design