First thing to note is that most Windows Live services haven’t had a prominently place logo before, yes SkyDrive, Calendar etc have had them but that only appears to me for use as a favicon and not really used in branding. This, however, appears to be a a very different thing.
In this logo we see a greater emphasis on Hotmail and not so much on Windows Live, not something I would get to worked up about as I expect Microsoft people just want to refer to the service as Hotmail and drop the Windows Live name in conversation. Another interesting aspect of this logo is colour of that envelope, all logos before this have had a lot of blue on them and used pastel colours, this is bright orange and glossy, perhaps even transparent. Perhaps all services’ logos will take on this new look whilst the applications’ logos will remain the same.
One reason I can think of why Microsoft would want Hotmail to appear very different from Windows Live Mail is because Mail allows users to incorporate many different email providers into a single application where as Hotmail is more about being Microsoft’s email service. Microsoft will want to show Hotmail to be an alternative to Gmail whilst Mail is the thing to use to open up emails from any service.
I have to say I like the logo, definitely is striking and actually the slight glossy/glass look makes it feel modern. I look forward to seeing if other services receive a similar logo.
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