I'm a pretty huge fan of all the new Google designs. Plus, gmail, the top bar, fonts.... They've kept things minimalistic while making things just feel cleaner and crisper. Whoever is leading this redesign is doing a fantastic job.
Andy Hertzfeld did the Circles editor in Google+. The site-wide redesign is done by Google Creative Labs, which I think is behind the Search On advertisement series and the Parisian Love Superbowl ad. It's also had significant input and direction from the individual teams, eg. most of the Search UX team was involved in the websearch portion of the redesign.
That's not exactly correct. According to the article Hertzfeld was the key interface designer behind the Circles UI in Google+. The Google-wide visual redesign is the result of a lot of people's work.
There was a really good talk on the new Android Honeycomb UI at this year's Google I/O. The designers talked about wanting to move away from explicit box structures and to use type and spacing more to indicate structure. I really think they're on the right track with this, and they seem to be taking this approach with their new web UIs too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGIU2JX1U5Y
That said, the left pane of the new gmail interface looks a little too spartan at first blush. Maybe I'll get used to it but it looks a little unfinished to me now.
I jumped into an email thread and it feels like I'm reading the soot filled footprints of ancient Siberians crossing the glacial land bridge: everything's surrounded by so much white!
In this new design it's hard for my eyes to stay focused on the actual content.
I'm not liking the big red "Compose Mail" button and labels. Red is usually used as an indicator of warning and error messages, and the giant red button really jumps out at you when you first see the redesign.
If you're trying to move away from the "40 shades of blue" while keeping a fun and playful feel, why not use green?
Done. Also, on closer inspection, I think I see the rationale for their decision. They may have chosen red because it looks like red may be the "official" color of Gmail -- notice the red line on the top nav bar above "Gmail," along with the red "M" in the logo.
I now think the red works best too (but felt the same way as you about it at first). Other colours stand out against the red "Mail" and "Inbox" links, which gives a somewhat technicoloured dreamcoat feel to the UI. They could change the red links to green, but then they lose the connection with the red 'M' envelope character, as you rightly point out. A light grey might work, but probably wouldn't stand out enough for new users.
Very good point. I assumed because they looked very similar that it was the same person, but quite possible that someone else did the designs. Definitely very similar elements in UI though.
"Hertzfeld, who has been working at Google since 2005, is indeed the one we can thank for the better-looking interface on Google+, as he’s the design lead on the project."
He was the lead for the design, not just the circles features.