Google Expands Gradient Icons Across Apps as 2025 AI-Era Rebrand Broadens
Updated
Updated · The Daily Star · May 18
Google Expands Gradient Icons Across Apps as 2025 AI-Era Rebrand Broadens
12 articles · Updated · The Daily Star · May 18
Google is extending its gradient-based icon redesign across more apps, replacing the uniform circular look with softer gradients, rounded edges and more varied shapes.
Products including Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites and Keep appear to be dropping the long-used paper-sheet motif, while Google Chat shifts to a mostly green icon reminiscent of Hangouts.
The visual overhaul builds on design cues already seen in Maps, Photos and Gemini, blending pastel tones with brighter versions of Google’s four core colors.
Google tied the redesign to its AI-era evolution after refreshing its four-color “G” logo earlier in 2025, reflecting a broader move away from flat late-2010s aesthetics.
Will Google's colorful new Workspace icons finally fix the 'confusing app' problem its last redesign created?
Are Google's new icons a cosmetic fix or a visual signal of a deeper AI integration that will reshape how we work?