The official Go brand book [pdf]
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It could have been so much better, but instead they hired and chose the most cookie cut color scheme from Web 2.0 days, cliche logo that belongs on a shoe and a completely useless brand guide.
They should have hired C&G&H, InterBrand, Pentagram or someone sophisticated enough to understand that this is not a hot retail project, this is branding for a programming language.
What a shame, really. Sorry for a blunt criticism but I dislike almost every aspect of their branding. As a side note, I love Rust-Lang.org branding. It’s amazing. It conveys modernization + robustness.
Are you saying a sophisticated brand agency would intentionally brand worse because it's the expectation for a successful programming language? If I'm a design agency, I would reject bad design even if it's expected and commonplace. Although, there might be good features in the bad design, which I think should be kept.
In the end, this brand guide is not just about the language. The first section is all about identifying the audience and helping communication in the community, which I think is more important than the details mentioned later on (colors/typography/logo/etc).
> Go was created by a team of programmers who value honest, open communication, without exaggeration or excess. Our dialogue with one another and the broader community adheres to the following
I don't really believe that this statement is true, but I think expressing this aspiration is important.
I think the Rust language website is quite good too, since it has all the details of the code of conduct and contribution info, but it's not a fair comparison since it's a superset of brand guidelines.
My complaint would be that the Rust website actually has a far superior visual design than the Go website, but I don't think there's a problem Go's brand book. My 2 cents, or 5. :\
(Does a programming language need to be branded, is my question)