Amazing that program icons could cause such an uproar in the community, but not to be left out, I cast my vote:
Thumbs down.
I’ve read the rational behind them and all. I think they are just missing some very fundamental design principles. Something about a picture being worth a thousand words. A two-letter abbreviation is some small fraction of a word. They just don’t scan well for instant recognition. I think the perfect illustration of this is the following link that was posted in a comment on John Nack’s post. It shows a typical desktop – Windows XP – and every five seconds it switches from the old icons to the new ones in the quick launch bar. I think it’s fairly obvious which is the more usable design.
http://www.techwarrior.cx/~roliver/cs3-icons.gif
Just in case the link ever goes down, here are a couple of screenshots comparing the two:
I totally agree π
Unless you use them everyday, I’m not sure how a feather is instantly more recognisable as PhotoShop than the letters Ps. For me, I can never tell if Illustrator is the Butterfly, Orange feather or Flower and I end up having to read the name of the app in my dock anyway. Can’t see Ai beign more difficult to decipher than Flower…
=)
P.S. Im on OS X not that it changes much but my icons are somewhat bigger in the dock than on PC.
That’s funny because when I look at the two sets of icons on the quick launch bar, I find it easier to distinguish the CS3 icons because colors are so strong. Of course, if the new red Flash icon were next to the red Bridge icon, I could definitely see the possibility for confusion. Regardless, I’m no fan of the CS2 icons either because its difficult to see what the icons depict. Personally, I’d rather have the newer ones.
I know I’m in the minority on this one, but I like the new branding. I actually prefer the old Studio 8 branding with the little spherical icons, but given a choice between Photoshop represented as “Ps” or a feather, I’d go for the “Ps”. For me, the bolder colors and letters make it easier to find what I want, as opposed to remembering what a feather or butterfly correspond to.
Well, there you go. everyone has a preference. It’s not a huge deal to me, but I’d rather have a real “icon” than a square with an abbreviation. Anyway, at least they are customizable. I hope they at least bundle the exe with the old icons in it so it is easy to switch.
Quick launch bar number 2 – the coolest Quick launch bar on earth π Just a joke π Seriously what is wrong with you Adobe ? Icons that look like periodic table of the elements are supposed to look cool or what ?
Worse case scenario, on OSX, you can just copy and paste the old icons and replace the current CS3 icons.
I kind of like the new icons? The colors make it a snap to see what is what, but how will this work for those that can’t see colors or have color problems? (I have heard that about 10% of all men have problems with color.) Will it be just as easy to read the letters as to recognize the shape?
J
Not only were the feathers easier to recognize, but they also looked better. They also gave the program an identity — I bet there’s a thousand programs with two letters on top of a gradient out there π
“but IΓ’β¬β’d rather have a real Γ’β¬ΕiconΓ’β¬Β than a square with an abbreviation”
weren’t the MM icons a circle with an abbreviation i.e. fx, f, fw, p, dw. The only difference being that the letters were custom and harder to read? Seems to me Adobe have followed what MM were doing with their icons.
They weren’t letters, they were “runes”!
haha.
I suppose it is just different now. And if Adobe sticks with it we’ll get used to it. Time will tell.
I think the ketters versions suck.
well,letters π
I don’t know many of the applications that are in the above screenshots, but, for me, it’s far easier to see that Ps might be Photoshop as opposed to a feather. After Effects being AE is much easier to see than … whatever it is that the previous icon was … can’t tell by the screenshot. Kinda looks like a tapeworm.
And Ai being Illustrator … as in the file extension – yep that’s a lot easier than a flower, which indicates what? The program is going to present planting information?
I’m not saying I like the new icons better than the previous Macromedia ones actually the opposite. And btw, according to John Nack it was the ex-Macromedia team, the ones that came out with the MX04 icons, that came up with the new CS3 icons.
I liked the MX04 icons because they didn’t try and display a picture of something you would try to associate the program with, but instead gave you an icon for which you would associate to the program.
Funny that the two player icons are not changing …
Well, I think the idea is not that you will look at a feather and think, “oh, I bet that is probably photoshop” any more than you would look at a small “e” with a ring around it and automatically know that it is a web browser, IE. The idea is that after you use it a few times, your mind automatically equates the “e” with the idea of checking a web page. Or an orange fox wrapped around a blue ball is FireFox. I think it’s a lot easier for the mind to equate a unique image like that with a program, then a rather generic square and two-letter abbreviation. You can say the old Macromedia logos were just letters too, and I joked about them being “runes”, but it’s sort of true that they weren’t just letters, they had a unique shape. You could say many company logos are “just composed of letters” but the letters may have a particular shape or style that makes them transcend being “just letters” and form a unique design that you recognize before you even consciously notice which letters are there.
Personally, I don’t feel that the new icons do this. They are just too plain. but maybe that plainness will become a style in itself, instantly recognizable. Again, time will tell.
My two cents:
Did they lay off their design staff in the merger?????
I think the new ones look like someone phoned it in without much thought and will hurt the Brand. You have to read each one to pick the program which takes longer than a graphic icon. They want us to remember colors. I liken it less to the periodic table of elements and more like the US terrorism threat level colors.. which i still have no idea which color means what. I wonder what the CS3 packaging is going to look like?
I hope Adobe reads all these blogs and changes these before it’s too late. It seems a good 90% of users hate the icons.
Keith, have you seen the Venice Project UI? Wondering what you think of that. I’m not personally crazy about it. It looks like it was designed by a programmer to me.
From a Mac perspective I can understand this, if using an Icon Dock. I used a similar dock on Windows for a long while and the new icons would probably suck. However I’m not using the quick launch bar at all and dropped the dock in favor of Launchy, a keystroke application starter util. With icons I’m very critical and most of the recent icon designs (OSX icons, WinXP/Vista icons) all dissatisfy me. IMHO the best looking icons are beOS icons so I usually exchange the couple of icons I got on my desktop to the fine isometric beOS ones *sticks tongue out to Microsoft*
Hmm, I’m on the thumbs down train. It looks like these icons were designed in Windows Paint and the only font available is Arial. To me an icon is branding, it’s a logo. If you had a company, say Widgets are Us, would you design a blue square with Arial text Wu? Or would you rather have a stylized widget icon (whatever that might be) with a little bit of typography on Wu.
I think Apple has done it right with their software, when you look at the software bundled with OSX you instantly know what the programs are by their icons. iPhoto (camera and a photo), iCalendar (a flip calendar), Photobooth (a curtain with a strip of 4 photos), iChat (a camera with a cartoon bubble). To me Adobe is a creative company, these icons are the furthest thing from creativity.
I agree with Keith, after a couple times you associate the image with the program. When I go to open Photoshop I don’t even think about it, I just click on the feather, same with Sepy, I click on the snake ball thing. And I also agree the studio 8 icons were perfect. To this day, the Flash icon is one of my favourites. Clean, simple, and easily recognizable. I think Adobe should start using their tools and come up with some cool icons. Use all those bevel, and emboss filters, add some dimmension please. I could design those in Micorsoft Word.
Anyway, that’s my $0.02
I still dont belive that they are the final ones.
Seeing the ps icon imidatly thought:
” ah a place holder because they dont want to giveaway the final one ”
They are not even cool because beening clean and simple, just look like a place holder to me…
Dont those icons look pretty!