Since the G+ icon has been added to the small column of share icons, I find myself unable to read a question without looking at it at least once or twice. The color is so unlike everything else on the UX site that my brain interprets it as a notification or something that I must deal with immediately. It's RED, after all, and we all know what a powerful color it is... Examples one, two, three, four, and five.

I did a quick graphical survey of the share icons on several graduated sites. UX and English are the only two that have this relatively large, flat, red, glaring icon:
UX, English, Android, Stackoverflow, Superuser, Serverfault, Webapps, Math, Photography, Bicycles, Cooking, Apple.
Photography and Apple have my favorite icons of the bunch: mellow, yet sleek, attractive, and slightly stylized.

The rest are all shaded or softened to a degree that makes the icons blend in a bit better. UX is the only site that doesn't soften any of the icon colors.

Is sharing from UX, and sharing on G+ specifically, so important that we use such an intense graphic to represent the site?

  • Isn't the point of the sharing buttons to be visually distinctive enough to attract your attention? In other words, aren't they performing their function correctly? Fading them into the background is the exact opposite of what you'd want to do with controls designed to be clicked on. And as I've indicated before, I think they could even do with some further attention - the location they're in right now isn't the most obvious one. – Rahul Feb 1 '12 at 21:37
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    The point I think is more that it clashes; it's the one red element on most pages. The blues of Twitter and FB fit in much better,,, – Ben Brocka Feb 2 '12 at 16:44
  • Closed as too localized since the share buttons were rolled up into the share link anyway (and because the Unanswered bot was going to keep bumping this post for all eternity otherwise) – Ben Brocka Jan 22 '13 at 15:27

This has been hashed out on several other sites' metas:

The consistent answer is: no, the developers will not be altering the colors of the Google Plus sharing buttons. My sympathies, but this is the only answer I have for you, and it's one unlikely to change.

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    It appears that the TeX group got the icon desaturated afterall (see: meta.tex.stackexchange.com/a/2218). With that in mind, can we get it too (or is this a global change that they're discussing)? – Daniel Newman Feb 3 '12 at 21:23

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