New Google Play Badges

When you’re advertising your smartphone app, perhaps the first thing you show off are platform badges. They’re the easiest and most familiar way to tell users where they can find your app. All major platforms, Apple’s App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store have official badges which are somewhat consistent with each other.

However, these badges aren’t that consistent. For example, Google shows the icon of Google Play (the distribution system), whereas Apple and Microsoft show their corporate logos (Apple previously had an iPhone shape as the icon).

For now, I’ll only look at the two major smartphone platforms, Android and iOS/iPadOS. Apple’s icon is one of the most recognizable icons in the world, so it makes sense for them to use it on their badges, but I don’t think I can say the same for Google Play. On the contrary, I think the Android icon in incredibly familiar to most people, Android rebranding announcement:

The design of the logo draws inspiration from the most recognizable non-human member of the community, the Android robot.

That’s why I think that the “Get it on Google Play” badge should be changed to showcase the Android icon, not the Google Play icon. The distribution system is irrelevant, the platform is what matters.

Similar icons can also be made using the Google Play Music, Movies, and Books icons.