Here's A Rare Look At Google's Design Principles

For a while, one of Google's big weakness was design.

But in the last couple of years, Google has made leaps and bounds in that field.

It all started back in 2011, when Chris Bettig came on board as an art director at Google.

Bettig and his team's focus was to create a cohesive visual design style across platforms and products. The team was also tasked with creating guidelines to define Google's visual design.

Now Google has a definitive guide for design, called the Google Visual Asset Guideline.

There are several principles that designers must follow when creating Google products and marketing material. The guidelines detail things like color palettes that are acceptable to use in logos and user interface designs. It also offers tips on designing illustrations and icons.

For product icons, Google likes them to be "highly simplified, exaggerated and caricatured in nature so that they are appropriate for use at small sizes."

Take a look at some of the guidelines below.

All of Google's product icons must be geometrically shaped.

The icons have to be front-facing.

And possess "straight hard shadows."

You can check out more of Google's design guidelines here.