This site has gone through many iterations over its nearly 24 years of existence.

It first went live at GeoCities.com in the Silicon Valley neighborhood of Heights, specifically 1094, back in August of 1995. Yes, that coincided with the launch of Windows 95.

Over the ensuing 2 1/2 decades, the name has morphed from Another Windows 95 Links and Resources Page to its first domain name of AnotherWin95.com and now its current web address at WindowsObserver.com.

I also use the tag line Keeping an eye on Windows and other things tech! for the site but despite my best efforts, I can not remember when I started using that, but it now accompanies not only the website but also the Observed Tech PODCAST.

Today I am very happy to announce a first for WindowsObserver – brand new unique and original logo designs.

I worked with the very talented Florin Bodnarescu, aka @Sszecret on Twitter, as we went from concept to final design and I could not be happier with the work. Along with new logos for both WindowsObserver and my WindowsObserver WIKI, there are new favicons which work across all the browsers.

There are nods in the logo design that incorporate the concept of watching or keeping and eye on things plus they both share different elements that connect them as being from the same family of sites.

Florin also created the hero image at the top of this page which highlights both new logos. In addition, he prepared the graphics below to help show the evolution of both the logos and Favicons.

Let’s take a look:

WindowsObserver Logo on the left, WindowsObserver WIKI on the right

As you can see we ultimately landed on the concept of the O in the small logo being an eye as we are keeping an eye on things. The eye’s pupil was shifted to be looking in different directions for each logo to make them each different but yet varied. The background colors of each match each sites global accent color in their respective themes.

This two letter logo is incorporated into the larger logos for each site along with their names as shown below:

WindowsObserver and WindowsObserver WIKI Logos Evolution

The word WIKI in the white box also uses the global accent color of the main WindowsObserver website to create a further connection between the two logos/sites. We left the white box blank in the main sites logo to also provide a thread of connectivity between the two sites.

Next up is the new favicons that show up in web browser tabs and favorite lists. Interestingly enough, we actually finalized the new favicons before the main logos.

Here is another graphic from Florin showing the evolution of the favicons for the logo re-design:

WindowsObsever and WindowsObserver Favicons Evolution

As mentioned earlier, the concept of the O being an eye made sense with both the observer part of the sites name and the tag line of keeping an eye on things. You can see that we tried using the two letters combined, featuring a stylized W that we eventually moved on from, but for small favicons it was not very clear in browser Tabs, etc.

That is when we decided to try the single letter O as the eye and see how that looked in various browsers as the favicon.

Favicons on Favorites Toolbar

Favicons on Browser Tabs in Microsoft Edge

The single letter as an eye comes across and is much more effective than the pixelated view of the two letter logo combined. That then settled the form of the O in the main logos and then we went from there to finalize everything.

As I said earlier, having the first ever unique and original designs for the site logos is pretty cool and I can not thank Florin enough for his design insight along with the discussions we had about all of this. It was a terrific iterative design process that was a lot of fun to watch happen in real time. These graphics really bring home the fact that design is not a one step/one stop shop but takes discussions and trying various ideas to finally arrive at a final destination.

I hope you enjoy the background on their creation and thanks as always for being part of the great community around WindowsObserver!