Windows 8 was released on October 26, 2012, and introduced features such as the new Start screen, the Charms, apps, and touchscreen support for devices such as the new Surface tablet. Notably, this logo ditched the flag design that had been used since 2001, as well as the three-dimensional Aero theme, replacing it with a simple window tilted to the left, designed by Pentagram. This logo was unveiled on Windows 8 Consumer Preview, released in February 29, 2012. Microsoft overhauled their logo again to fit in with the new Metro design language on Windows 8, which removed the colors to become all blue and introduced a slightly modified Segoe font. He explained that despite the goal to depict 'a window with cool motion effects', the final design ended up resembling a flag of all the candidates, it was the one he liked the most. According to Silverberg, the right part of the logo is a window, while the left part of the logo conveys motion.

The logo was commissioned by Brad Silverberg, a Senior VP at Microsoft. Cowles, art director at Microsoft from 1991 to 1994, cites himself as designer of the original Windows flag, under the supervision of Boettcher and Julie Wong. On Twitter, Microsoft cites Jeff Boettcher as the designer of the original Windows flag. Support for the Windows 3.1x line of operating systems ended on December 31, 2001, except for WFW 3.11 embedded, in which support ended on November 1, 2008.

This logo also would have a trail behind it. The rest of the 3.1x series included Windows 3.11, Windows 3.2 and Windows for Workgroups, where slight changes were made to the colors of the logo. The iconic four colored, flag-like Windows logo was introduced with Windows 3.1. Windows 3.1 was an updated version of Windows 3.0, with several enhancements to the still DOS-based platform, including improved system stability, expanded support for multimedia, Truetype fonts, and workgroup networking.

Microsoft desktop voices 2015