Microsoft Office 365’s suite of tools have a new look, thanks to a new logo redesign of Microsoft’s icons.
In a blog post announcing the move, Microsoft Corp. called the new icons a way to embrace the “new world of work” and reflect product changes over the past few years that now sees artificial intelligence integrated into various Office tools.
“Today’s workforce includes five generations using Office on multiple platforms and devices and in environments spanning work, home, and on the go. We wanted a visual language that emotionally resonates across generations, works across platforms and devices, and echoes the kinetic nature of productivity today,” stated Jon Friedman, head of Microsoft Office design in the blog post.
The last time the Office suite of tools saw a redesign was 2013, but since its creation in the 1980s has seen more than 11 changes to its logos.
While newly designed Microsoft Office icons may not matter too much in the grand scheme of things and likely won’t change the way we use the tools themselves, the past few years have seen some interesting feature updates to the Office 365 suite of tools.
In July Microsoft announced AI tools, like facial recognition and speech-to-text for the entire Office lineup.
At its annual Build conference in May the Redmond, Washington-based company also added Windows Machine Learning to allow developers to create ML models that can be used for Word for example.
The icon design changes will roll out over the next couple of months and will include new icons for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneDrive, OneNote, SharePoint, Teams, Yammer and even Skype.