Microsoft Word Icon on Transparent Background

Usage story of Word icon

Documents form the backbone of many, many businesses. Writing down things is a clear, reliable way to make things official and to record information for future use. Before the dawn of modern technology, we wrote directly on paper and media. But in today’s digital age, we have the power of computers to do our bidding -- and Microsoft Word is one of them.

Word has existed for a very long time. As early as 1987, the powerful document editing program was already represented by a small, pixelated, but simple icon. 1991 heralded a color change for the icon, but not much else was edited. And it was in 1993 that the Word logo started “flying”. Just after a few years, however, Word reverted its icon to a more simple style. It remained this way for a pretty long while.



The year 2000 saw a drastic change in Windows’ visual design, and with it came a Word icon revamp. The detail was massively reduced, and the iconic W took center stage. Microsoft would keep this overall design up until today:



Then in 2007, the document stylization returned to the Word icon:



The W was superimposed over the whole icon in 2010, up until it was integrated and angled into the logo itself in 2013. It has remained this way ever since: