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December 20, 2006
Now showing: The rest of the CS3 icons
Some folks have expressed curiosity about the other icons planned for the CS3 generation of Adobe applications, especially given our goal of having them work well as a complete system. So, with the blessing of Michael Gough, Adobe's VP of Product Experience*, here they are.
[ *Not to be confused with Alfred from Batman ]
[ Update: Some commentary: Jason Santa Maria hates 'em; Veerle Pieters likes 'em, and has more commentary from Adobe designer Ryan Hicks.
Update 2: Lee at The Flash Blog has created a 3D carousel of the icons. And Terri Stone pointed out her story on the genesis of the CS2 icons.]
Comments
My nightmare realized. Mystery meat two-letter icons with often slight variations in color. My workspace will be indecipherable.
[Not dismissing your opinion at all, but isn't it nice that in this world, at the end of 2006, it's computer iconography that constitutes our nightmares? We are very lucky to have literacy, intelligence, and leisure enough to give a damn about this stuff. --J.]
Maybe I'll find the old eyeball and Venus icons in the disk archives and resurrect them.
[Rock out. --J.]
I noticed that someone had the balls to stand up for the equity for a few products like Acrobat and flash. Consistency looks pretty bland and bereft of meaning from this workstation.
Are the icons going to be staying square? If so I'd question if the designers use macs at all. Those icons look really bad in the dock - I'm a designer and use the CS apps every day, and I'm looking at the icons all the time, they just don't work in the dock! Sure it's great to have simplicity, but don't you think you have overdone it? I design icons for fun (and sometimes for design work), and though I don't claim to be an expert, it normally doesn't work having the icon totally rely on type to communicate the idea.
Have the team that have come up with the branding for CS3 ever read Apple's guidelines for icon design? Not that they have to be followed, but they make sense generally. I can see where you're trying to go with the look of CS3, but man, the icons need more work! Both Mac OS X and Vista (and future versions of each OS) are headed (or with Mac OS X are already there) toward graphically rich icons - yes I know that's a challenge creating simple icons that are that - but these icons look totally out of place. I really hope that they're improved a lot before CS3 goes GM!
For me icons are part of the user experience, especially with Mac OS X - squares of color (ok there's a gradient) with type (even if the fount is really nice - which it is) just don't work.
Great! More ammo for the Dock Scrabblers.
[Hah! Hadn't seen that; thanks for the link. --J.]
Though I have been using Adobe/Macromedia products for over a decade now, I found it hard to decipher even a handful of those icons. They all look so similar and there appears to be very little relationship between the icons and what the programs do. I'm sure I'll get used to it after using it for some time, but I'm sure the lack of differentiation between the icons will make it take just a bit longer to get familiar with.
Pretty sweet. I'm a little dismayed at the appearance of FreeHand though.
Thank you for letting us see this.
Frankly, I don't like the new "icons". When I think of the dock full of those plain letter icons I can't imagine how to quickly find the application I need. I have the same problem with the current meaningless icons.
I want functional icons and I agree that the icons should have the name of the application in it but please similar to the Flash icon: THIS I call an icon. It has charm, it is simple and it clearly shows the letter f at the same time. I can easily identify it. Application icons should be individuals but still functional. Not just letters where color is the only difference I'm afraid.
The new font by Robert Slimbach shure is great but at icon size it doesn't matter what font. Adobe could also use Helvetica without any difference.
Just my 2 cents. Sorry.
But I'm glad Adobe is thinking of functional icons now and I'll use CS3 anyway :-)
Martin
I know some people are going to go overboard complaining about this, but, seriously - if they had the complete name, at least they'd be functional. I can't even tell what half of the products are. I recognize the easier ones like AI, PSD, and AE, but I have no idea what VC is or what those little pictures mean. Pages? I mean how many different Adobe products can produce a page? All of them? I'm guessing there's some reason to make it look like the periodic table, but I don't really get it.
When I saw that PS icon on the CS3 public beta, I figured it was just a placeholder because the product is still in beta.
These almost entirely defeat the purpose of having an iconic GUI. These are supposed to repesent graphic design programs? I thought it was a cruel hoax pointed at the almost indistinguishable lot of icons currently employed by CS2.
This is a real shame. Is there an information designer in the house!?! ANYBODY?
Guess I've spent too much time with 'shop 3.5, 5.5 and 7 to like those... It looks like periodic table and most of the abbreviations don't make any sense to me :)
Oh Joy, just bought a Macbook and was looking forward to CS3 coming out, and now I can tell I'm going to need to dedicate a special folder just to hide these Icons.
While functional is nice, I don't want Alphabet soup in my Dock. If I wanted Alphabet soup I would heat up a can of Alphabet soup and eat it.
Don't mean to come off as a jerk but I thought the Photoshop CS3 icon was just a well, beta icon. :(
I really like the new new icons. I'm a graphic designer as well and I think they work great on the Dock. They stand out from everything else because of the simplicity.
Great job on this new branding campaign!
Sorry Adobe, but I've already got a system, and your software is just a small part of it. Design consistency across Adobe apps means _nothing_ when you place that design next to non-Adobe apps. And those other developers actually put some thought behind their icons. Talk about frickin' lazy.
[Talk about frickin' rude. I swear, this whole Interweb thing tires me out sometimes... The validity of your points gets lost when you get into name-calling. --J.]
It is interesting where we pick our battles. I have to say that I like the new icons although I only use several of Adobe's products. I use the OSX platform and already change many of my app's icons (using iconfactory products) to a more clean and uniform style. I think clean and distinctive is good on all my desktops (lapops and towers). What these new icons represent fall right in line with what I already do.
If BMW were to change the logo on my beloved M5, I would still enjoy my vehicle nonetheless.
[And I would still envy your ride. ;-) OT: Best license plate I've seen in a while, spotted in Evanston, IL: "NV MY MV". --J.]
I've started to try and identify each of the symbols here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdharrison/328467657/
We need a legend for this thing!
For me, I don't care how the icons work. I care that the app is stable, has the features I need, etc. When Adobe change the way the icons were designed in CS, I had to readapt. With the new branding direction, we're going to need to do the same.
Love it or hate it, deal with it. (You can always change it later if they bother you too much. So chill, people.)
As I feared, the whole range of Adobe products is going to be converted into a lifeless series of indecipherable colored squares.
Honestly, I can't figure out what most of these programs are, and I am very familiar with most of Adobe's products.
The presence of an icon here and there is quite puzzling, and at the least inconsistent.
I do have to ask, is "Pm" PageMaker?
For those mac users who have expressed difficulty in deciphering what I see as elegantly simple icons...
Why are you not using Quicksilver? Is it because QS requires users to distinguish between keys on the keyboard?
That is a joke, right? :-|
That design is by someone who designs with their head exclusively, not with heart. Truly awful icons for anyone who appreciates elegance.
Like most of the posters I'm not a big fan of these icons, just as I wasn't a fan of the Macromedia icons. I see the point, I encourage the use of a system that pulls from the color wheel, but like some others are pointing out, when you have a gradient of icons in the dock, things are going to be harder to pick out from the rest. Currently, when I want to open Photoshop I reach for a feather. Illustrator, a flower. InDesign, a butterfly. There is the continuous theme of the soft white rounded boxes with a strong and drawing form in brilliant color to offset. Couldn't something like that be done? Macromedia used to have some very wonderful icons with the flowing dial for Flash or the weird, almost curved circuits of Dreamweaver, to the fun, flickering flames of Fireworks. All of these could've been revived to appear against the white rounded boxes of the CS2 visual system and far less people would've had a problem. It will also look pretty odd to have the "Periodic Table" as has been described by others with icons here and there that have the classic marks on them such as Acrobat. To me, that tells of a lack of foresight into the visual system as it was being established and a reluctance to realize the new system wasn't working as originally thought and a lack of willingness to deter from the course. I also prefer to have my icons in alphabetical order in the dock according to the application name (i.e. - Acrobat, Bridge, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop...) and now I'm going to have red, deep red, orange, purple, blue. I don't like the idea that in order for things to look good, seemingly admittedly by the designers of the new system, you must have many CS3 applications and have them in the gradient order. I don't have a use for Flash or AfterEffects or any of them not in the design pack, so the system is going to basically be broken in my dock. That's not what design is about, I'm afraid, it's about creating a visual system that works as a single item as well as in a handful or in a complete set. I hope this has been constructive for the team, regardless of whether or not it's too late to do any revision, should there be any chance of that happening. I'm just glad that there are going to be enough improvements and enhancements of the applications to make the upgrade well worth it.
This is by far the worst and most non-systematic system of symbols.
Have you ever heard of the term 'usability'? Stuff like consistency? User anticipation? Color blindness, anyone?
Do you really expect people to adopt to "PS" for Photoshop? I remember a certain other Adobe technology that already occupied this abbreviation. If you like to make the point that it has a lower case "s", yeah, that's easily distinguishable from the upper case "S" in small caps.
Also Adobe seems to introduce a calendaring app, as "Di" ist the official abbreviation for Tuesday in German.
I also particulary like the "Au", "Br" and "Co" apps which seem to mark Adobe's entry into the chem app market.
Will there be an AM version of the "FM" radio app?
Hell, what were you thinking?
If it catches on, we'll certainly have a new language around our professional roles. Apologies in advance.
"I used to be all orange (Director) -- everyone was going red (Flash), so I decided to break from the trend and jump to purple (Premiere)."
"I'm tried and true green (Framemaker, Pagemaker seems to be in the wrong place), but once Ottaway started publishing online-only, I started to feel the pull toward yellow (Dreamweaver)."
"He thinks he's all blue (Photoshop), but his complete ignorance of LAB color proves he's far more orange (Fireworks).
Those icons aren't clear enough. Icons need to be recognizable at 16x16 and 32x32.
The flash and acrobat ones make sense but those other Arial 2 letter icons are too simple.
When making icons, you usually try to design something simple and recognizable to identify things. At the expense of creating a family of icons, you've watered them down so much as to be unrecognizable at a glance. The variety of color, while great in theory, does little to help matters because of the sheer number of icons. The plain facts that monitor variations kill the subtle differences, and there are quite a few color blind people out there who can't distinguish certain shades from one another, should have led you towards a backup plan. That may be what the periodic letters are for, but in choosing to go with one font, and one orientation, you've created enough noise that none of them would be recognizable among the others. Plus, baking in the action of having to read the icon just to decipher it adds an unnecessary step.
This is an utter design failure.
While I suppose it's easy enough to copy the old icons and use them, I honestly can't fathom the thought process behind the swap. The new icons are generic and break years of branding. I honestly don't get it.
i think we'll all just going to get along very nice after a while using these new icons and never want to go back to other kind of icons. color + simple IS the way to go! will always be.
and who uses 16x16 icons AND apps in CS3?
I honestly don't mind since I spend my time with the programs open rather than looking at the icons. I figure after a few tries I'll figure out which is which.
However, I don't quite understand why similar technologies weren't grouped together by color. I read that their historical colors were being kept, but it's odd to me that Dreamweaver and Contribute are on opposite sides, and that the server technologies are all over the board.
That said, I'll get used to it.
forgot to say: "how many color blind people use 2 or more adobe apps?"
Apart from the coloring and cryptic naming, my question is what is the significance of the positions of the various products? Why is Pagemaker out on the edge and Flex in the center (product age?). Why are DreamWeaver and Golive opposite one another and why is VersionCue (someone asked what is VC) next to DreamWeaver? Why is Photoshop grouped near ColdFusion?
I would think that similarly colored items would have similar functionality and that changes in shade would signify different levels of functionality (like Elements compared to Photoshop).
It's interesting to see that the Flash player got to keep it's old font, but the Flash authoring tool is in the new font.
There's already been some people posting online their own icons to replace the Photoshop C3 icon and I imagine that the bad reaction to these new icons will encourage even more people to do so. It could end up being quite interesting have several sets of Adobe icons out there from different designers for users to choose from.
"Mac OS X user application icons should be vibrant and inviting, and should immediately convey the application’s purpose. The TextEdit icon, for example, indicates clearly that this application is for creating text documents." - Apple Human Interface Guidelines
So I can assume that this set of applications is to help create a Periodic Table?
[Apple = Correctness. I know, I forgot. I will retire to the Garden of Pure Ideology now for re-education. By the way, what does the Motion icon convey to you? Celestial navigation, maybe? I'm not trying to stick it to Apple; I just get weary of the presumption that anything done at that company = The Way (and I'm typing this from a brand new MBP, btw). --J.]
>
Check the Windows Start menu.
Sorry, but you're kidding, right? These are more like icon placeholders than actual final icons. What's with the color wheel?
I use Photoshop and InDesign virtually every day but I had to look at a legend that someone created and linked to in the comments just to find which ones were for those programs.
The "less is more" approach does work for many things but definitely not in this case. Please reevaluate these icons. They're simply not good.
Take a cue from the popular web development book: Don't make me think.
Awwww cummon now people, if adobe gave you the colour wheel background as a desktop background then you could lay your icons out like that and use color semantics instead on image semantics....Where can I get my blank desktop lol.
Oh dear, i thought this was a simply a beta placeholder. I honestly feel like you've taken this "less is more" icon design to the extreme. I didn't care for the last set-what does a feather have to do with photoshop? You guys have to remember that your products are tools(not states of mind or elements on a periodic table), which we need to find quickly and efficiently. Over the past few releases you have allowed (and this is said in the nicest way possible) your designers egos to get in the way of their job, which is to develop icons that allow us to immediatly process the symbol and link it to the software in our head. If i have to sit and decode the symbol then you have failed at the most important goal of the icon.
I still believe this is a joke and that these are just the "temporary" icons for Adobe's products.
More telling, though, is that there is no "IR" for Image Ready to be found, but "Fw" for Fireworks is present. Should we take this to mean that ImageReady is dead and Fireworks will be replacing it in CS3?
[IR is dead; pour out a 40 for our dead homie. FW will not replace it in the Photoshop box. --J.]
I don't think I've ever seen so much whining from a group of users... I’m sure this decision was not made rashly and find the icons (with corresponding themes running through each app) to be unobtrusive and elegant. I’m pleased with the change and wish Adobe and those behind this effort all the best.
[Thanks, Joseph. --J.]
I had assumed the Photoshop icon was temp art slapped in by the devs. It's a bit disheartening to see that it's the final product.
The design strategy is very similar to the former Macromedia apps, but at least those had some degree of typographic flare. These are very generic.
Ah well. Thanks for posting this at least. I'm sure there will be plenty of replacement icons to choose from.
[I have no doubt. ;-) --J.]
So...someone actually paid a "designer" to redo the Periodic Table? Hope Adobe can get their money back!
For what it is worth, everyone has to remember that 99.99% of the users of the various apps are only going to see a max of 3 or 4 of the icons at any given time, so the worry about Alphabet soup is kinda moot.
As far as I'm concerned, seeing PS, IL and ID in the dock is a helluva lot more useful than a feather, flower and butterfly.
A bonus for those of us that try to keep their desktops as neutral as possible (Your work should be the most colorful thing right?) is that the icons should be fairly simple to convert to grayscale without looking too bad.
Still too busy, if "less is more" gimmie more, err less, and another 5,000 words of corporate double plus good speak to justify it!
I find the new icons easier to identify when switching between apps (just Photoshop, Acrobat and Bridge for now). The plain colored background makes them stand out in the dock and, since Adobe apps are my main apps, that's a good thing.
Having usually 7 or less Adobe icons in the dock, I don't find the new letters confusing at all.
Still, I guess something like Adobe Reader icon would have satisfied more people : plain colored background to have it stand out in the dock and the usual logo in thin version stuck on it (feather or eye for Photoshop, butterfly for Indesign, flower or face for Illsutrator etc.)
This makes no sense. I can understand if they are simple placeholder but looking at all of these in the dock or start menu could get tiring quick? What about the non-English users? Will each language have it's own set of icons? Good grief. Go with something graphical.
With the Flash icon staying the same I don’t see why not leave Dreamweaver and Fireworks alone. Well I do see why, because both are integrating into CS3 rather than like Flash which is more of a separate product like how Acrobat is.
Still, it’d be more interesting if the type on each product’s icon had more style. I think after a while these icons will seem kinda bland (and judging from reactions from above comments, various blogs, and various messageboards, I think some people already think so).
I also thought the icon was a "beta thing." I totally understand your icon concept in theory, but in practice... I think someone needs to re-think.
I'm a CF developer by trade, but just because I write and read code all day doesn't mean I want a user interface that consists of the same. I thought the Contribute icon was the Coldfusion icon at first.
That PS3 icon in my dock has me humming "One of these kids is doing his own thing..." (Old-school Sesame Street reference) I may be a "dev", but my CS apps are where I kick back and have a little fun - even when I'm using them for work.
Seeing five of those non-descript squares in my dock would make my System Prefs icon look really sexy, though. ;-)
VP of Product Experience? Fire Michael Gough.
Let's fix this branding debacle before we get out of beta.
I will sum it up for you in 4 letters: Y-U-C-K
And I thought Adobe was a design company?
g
I have to agree with everyone who doesn't like the square icons and similar colors between apps. I think they will be difficult to navigate in the OSX dock and will cause issues. Luckily, once we have everything open, we can use Expose and soon Spaces.
Here is a little tidbit that Microsoft learned when designing the new UI ribbon.
"People can scan disparate patterns more easily than homogenous patterns. When we use more toolbar-like layouts--a bunch of equally-spaced, equally-sized buttons, people scan them less quickly than when each chunk has a memorable layout." Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2005/09/29/475296.aspx
omg i feel devastated! :(
it might be okay to merge the present icons with the square periodic table ones... however this is a real departure and i don't feel comfortable with the cs3 icons right now.
not that i have to though.
Thanks for the sneak peek - they all look good :)
John, I've been meaning to talk with you about something... that yellow plaid shirt and black jeans, they're okay, but the brown shoes... don't make it.... ;-)
You've gotten picked up on Digg and a few weblogs:
http://digg.com/search?s=adobe
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=%22john+nack%22&scoring=d
[Ah--that would explain it! All I do now is sort through comment emails! --J.]
I think the current reaction may be due to the lack of context, the need to figure out the two-letter glyphs, the inability to see how things lay out in dock/taskbar. Any chance we can get some more of the screenshots up, so that people can see how this will really work...?
(For the record, I like the whole presentation greatly myself, but I can understand how people might react this way with the little they've seen so far.)
jd/adobe
"By the way, what does the Motion icon convey to you?" john i actually think that a gyrascope is a pretty good icon for an app that allows you to apply behaviors to assets over time like rotation, bounce, particles, etc. as this link descibes:
http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_3037265
[A reasonable point, Ethan. I guess the thing always reminds me of an astrolabe, and the only time I used a gyro directly was on a Navy ship. --J.]
also i slapped together a mockup to see what my dock may look like soon to add some context and i didn't even put bridge or acrobat in. I think MM was able to get away with their glyph designs as they did not have as many apps as adobe does now. I'll be upgrading but i'm glad i own candybar...
http://www.waq177.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/cap.jpg
I think the idea is brilliant and totally in keeping with Adobe's product line, which gets better by the day.
Looking at the chart I'm struck by how hard it is to pick out individual icons even knowing the names of all the apps... In fact the only icons that are instantly recognizable are the legacy graphic ones... The reason people use distinct images and fonts in signage is to differentiate the signs from one another...
So this one's not for posting (Hey, you didn't post the last one either...)
[Sorry--it wasn't intentional. I get a heck of a lot of spam comments, and sometimes they get filtered too aggressively. --J.]
DUDE! FWIW, I was one of the more arrogant and intolerant PMs when I was there; not quite at the Hamburg / Andrei level, but then I'm not nearly as smart as they are either...
...but now I feel like Paul Horning watching LT beat my record; what is UP with the COMMENTS?!?
These are customers, man! I KNOW you've got the coolest job in the place, but WHOA!
[Maybe I need to see an example of what you're referring to, Kevin. Or maybe I need to stop working so much and actually get some fresh air. I think I show my respect for customers by having a blog at all & interacting via the comments. That said, I didn't come here to be a droid or a doormat. --J.]
I know - unsolicited advice, but just ask yourself "What would Connor do?" or Brown, or Julie, or Maria, etc.
[Perhaps they'd be more chill, by dint of being less fried, by dint of not blogging at all... Still, I hear you, and I don't mean to be a defensive pill (esp. as I'm just the messenger on this icon thing). I can hardly argue for civility while being impolite. --J.]
Or even better, John or Chuck?
OK - I'll shut up now. Be well...
(Oh, be well AND announce cross-platform licensing; it's still festering...)
[I already said on the forum that we'll enable cross-platform testing of the beta. I just haven't publicized it widely because we're still ramping up support & I don't want to crush those guys with requests just yet. First we have to make sure that all remaining kinks in the serialization tool are worked out. *Then* the crushing can begin. ;-) --J.]
Uh... I REALLY MEANT it wasn't for posting (inside voice and all).
Anyway, I've been there man, and I think your diagnosis is spot on. Your web footprint says that you are everywhere all day long, and that means that MeetingMaker is probably also beating you to death.
Mucho credit to you for taking on the icons; that's either clever, generous, or both! BTW, how do those localize into Japanese and other two bite languages?
That's great news on the licensing; there is a petition thread out on the labs site that hasn't got that message yet. Your (or JCs) defusing services would be much appreciated there.
Enough of my critical babble; I'm sure I'll meet you in three weeks at Moscone; stop by the FileMaker booth if you get a chance!
SLEEP!
;-)
k
If I ever needed confirmation that Adobe has lost the plot.
[Because of some icons...? I mean, really? --J.]
Well, I like them!
Much better than the Feather/Feathers/Flower/Shell/Butterfly (or is that butterfly another feather? And what does clicking on the starfish launch again…?)
The new ones are smart, clean, easy to figure out (and to remember) what is what.
Adobe is a BIG family now. This is a good solution to keep aesthetic consistency, yet easy to recall who-is-who.
I, like others, thought the CS3 icon was purely for the purposes of the beta! I really think Adobe have made a mistake going down this route - the icons are ugly and confusing.
However I guess the decision has been made now?
We have enough abbreviations and shortcuts in our daily lives, and i don't really think we need another 20+;
Theese icons WILL bring confusion and dissapointment.
CS2 series was a good example of what icons should look like.
This is incredibly discouraging. Terrible taste in icons is one thing, but why is it being defended here with the "We don't care" tactic?
When someone says "Those are really bad" your response better be "No, they aren't" not "Oh come on, it doesn't really matter," which is what the author's blog comments seem to boil down to.
Seriously... hire a designer. This better be a joke. And don't defend poor design with "It's not a big deal, guys." Actually, icons matter.
[When did I say, or even imply, that this doesn't matter? Obviously it does, or people wouldn't be so vocal in their reactions. --J.]
Regarding the comment by charles on Apple's humnan interface guidelines, he seems to overlook the way in which Apple rides roughshod over those same guidelines when it comes to the GUI of their pro apps.
The non-Aqua interface (actually almost an 'anti-Aqua' interface) is not only contrary to those guidelines, other apps and the OS in general, but it's actually damned difficult to use. Aperture, FCP, Motion, the lot of them need a UI overhaul, to be brought into line with the Aqua interface.
That said, I'm no fan of the CS3 icons either. They are neither distinctive nor representative. Very odd for a company producing creative software, that the icons should be so lacking in creativity.
Adobe icons never make sense on Mac, feather? eyeball? But those squares with letters are not even icons. I have to watch them for 1 second to realize what it was, PS is Photoshop, Fl is flash, but where is my favorite Illustrator?
That's a bad ,bad, bad idea to replace graphic icons with 2 letters.
Silly.
Someone earlier said, "my nightmare realized" and I agree completely. I was hoping these were throwaway designs for the betas because somehow you guys didn't have enough time to work on them before the public release.
This looks like a branding exercise undertaken by programmers or science professors. Are you aiming to satisfy the Slashdot crowd with the geeky in-joke?
All right, so the Studio 8 branding sucked but is there any reason to try and outdo Macromedia on that one?
These are some of the worst production values I've seen. They say one thing to me and that is: "shareware".
Please re-think this terrible branding strategy while there is still time to make a change.
Sorry. But the icons really do suck.
Does the "FH" stand for FreeHand? Now THAT would be good news ...
At least the icons are highly stackable, thats good when entering the European market :-)
Thanks for showing us "The wheel". Can we all have this wheel in front of us and hum to the words of "Blood, sweat and Tears":
Spinning Wheel
(...
What goes up must come down
Spinnin' wheel got to go 'round
Talkin' 'bout your troubles it's a cryin' sin
Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel spin
You got no money and you got no home
Spinnin' wheel all alone
Talkin' 'bout your troubles and you never learn
Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel turn
Did you find the directing sign on the
Straight and narrow highway
Would you mind a reflecting sign
Just let it shine within your mind
And show you the colors that are real
Someone is waiting just for you
Spinnin' wheel, spinnin' true
Drop all your troubles by the riverside
Catch a painted pony on the spinning wheel ride
...)
I've been using this song for therapy the last few days, and it seems to help a bit.
Good luck with the new design, You'll need it (and we will by it anyway).
Best Regards
Karsten Vestergaard
well I doesn't have much to add but I wish I could listen the talk in the cs team, especially the ps beta team, that the most, and almost the only criticized feature of the beta is the icons, and that they are causing so much havoc in the designer community hearts!
As I've stated before, I don't like them, if you print the color wheel and spin it, you won't find the app you're looking for in less than 10 secs , and that's bad to me ... that dock mock up after staring at it for 10 seconds I couldn't tell which app was each.
I'm only sorry that in a PC it is a lot harder to change an icon that it is on the mac...
but since we're still in beta, I an only hope! :)
Oh my god. This can't be. My tool of ignition, my tool of inspiration, has turned on me. What are you thinking Adobe? This is the most ludacris set of icons I've seen. Beeing a graphic designer / Art Director this is just like out of a nightmare for me. This is the most lack of creativity I've seen in years. This is what I would expect from companies that have no Imagination.
Bring on the colors. Well I guys Adobe is trying to make sence out of theyre familly of products so ala colors and simple names. Well let's dwell on this issue for a second. The few who use all your products, and I'm assuming someone does... Having all the icons in the color spectrum won't make him find them faster, nor will it enhance the feeling and inspiration, the identity each product has. Colors are nice but use them wicely. Letter like Co, Ae, Ps sorry playnly suck - I surely hope that this is just a joke and not the real thing. How many companies do you think are using icons with letters on them? Well my company has created a few. So distinct no, not in longshot. Adobe has been a leader in inovation, leader in inspiration for Artists... Just look back and adore the new CS2 startup window for Photoshop, remember when they started going beond the square frame in the startup window... Even just creating the round edges... this is inspireing (sorry my english / I'm an Icelander so it's not my native toung).
Adobe plz go for something exciting, something special something that gives us hope, purpose. Something we would love to see in our dock, in our taskbar... Something to look forward to launch from our dock, after having our coffe cup after 3 hours of sleep. Because this program especially is my mistress. My friend. My partner.
Common Adobe plz tell me this is a joke.
I'm sorry John -- how ever good the upcoming CS3 products are the icons look absolutely terrible IMHO.
The whole look doesn't come across as very professional, particularly the letter ones. The square shape doesn't look all that bad but it would indeed stand out as a toothache in the dock on Mac.
Also have you guys thought about the possibility that using these letter combinations in icons for your products might be profanities have other unwanted connotations in certain languages?
I hope this does get reviewed again, its painful.
I'm with Luke regarding the good old graphical Flash/Fireworks/Dreamweaver icons, these were the best application icons I have ever seen. They were easily recognizable and still astonishingly beautiful, even at 16x16 in 256 color mode.
With the new Adobe product line icon set, it took me quite some time to figure out which applications all those icons were referring to.
Even though they make it easier to differentiate between the applications, they do not make it easy to find a specific application among the icons. This is not a problem if you have Photoshop only, but if you have more than one, one can only go by color (reading the two-letter combination takes way too long to be a viable method of finding a particular software). All the power that lies in the shape of the icon, is wasted.
Just have a look at the dock in ethan's mockup and compare how long it takes to complete the following two tasks. There are exactly 11 Adobe product icons and 11 non-Adobe-product icons...
- Find iTunes
- Find InDesign
I mean, obviously I have not been using that icon system in practice yet, maybe it turns out better than I can imagine in everyday use, but right now my impression is that your design team has been a little over-enthusiastic, I'm afraid.
But hey, one can recognize great art by the fact that it makes people think, and many marketing geniuses can only dream about their target audience spending so much time just thinking about their logo :)
they are just awful. sorry.
Can you please change the Illustrator icon to "Ill" instead of "Ai" ;-)
Serious, why is it "Adobe Illustrator" and not only Illustrator? I mean this is the only app where you put Adobe in front. Is there a reason for this?
["AI" is the historic abbreviation for "Illustrator." Yeah, it's a little quirky, but it's been that way for 20 years, and the design team wanted to respect that history. --J.]
And: is there any sense in the order of the icons on the color scheme? I don´t get it.
Is it true that you hired a Microsoft GUI designer to do this work? ;-)
[No--it's the design team from the former Macromedia. --J.]
Whilst I don't doubt this decision was debated internally I can't help but feel whoever approved it has taken leave of their senses.
If you don't believe me, perhaps you'll believe Apple's own HIGs for icons? After all, these applications will almost certainly be in widespread use on their machines.
"...application icons should be vibrant and inviting, and should immediately convey the application’s purpose..."
It's also poor form to dismiss comments simply because it's only about "some icons" (you thought it worthy enough a subject to post about, after all). Icon design might seem a trivial matter but by the same token, so are the creative arts which these applications serve.
[Again, I don't recall dismissing anything. Maybe there's some alternate version of this thread that no one has told me about. ;-) --J.]
As someone relatively new to the Adobe Creative Suite, I find identifying the program from the current icons quite difficult when I see them together.
While I'm not a massive fan of the new coloured blocks, I do see them as more easily distinguished than the current ones due to the text cues - and on that score preferable.
I do admit that, if I used a lot of them, then they might be less easy to tell apart in the Mac OS X dock. But I tend to put programs into the dock in functional groupings so they would have some context anyway.
I reckon that using the color wheel as a design theme is really appropriate for Adobe however I do have to agree with some of the comments regarding the 'distinguishability' of the icons. I am color-blind and have real trouble differentiating between the new icons - the shades are just too close and the letters do not offer enough distinction. It wouldn't be so bad if they were grouped by function so that similar apps had similar colors. That said... Adobe is a smart company and I'm sure that when these icons are viewed within the context of new packaging, promotional material and possibly a refreshed Adobe.com; people may not be so harsh.
Just my thoughts... McDee
Don't blame the designer- blame the Client (Adobe). I'm sure this icon system wasn't the only creative option provided to Adobe. Too often the client dumbs down an idea and forces a designer into a corner where the result is a complete embarassment.
[Designer = Client in this case. The design team from the former Macromedia has remained intact & drove this effort. They didn't want to end up with some milquetoast, design-by-committee results, so they went off, did their thing, and presented the results. I wasn't involved in this effort, but I used to be a designer & I know all about clients dumbing things down. In this case I get the impression that the design team had pretty free reign to solve the problem as they saw fit. --J.]
A periodic table of adobe elements? I don't mind the simple two letters icons so much. Sure, they are dry... What really worries me is that mouse arrow being chased by the rocket or whatever that is...
People still use MeetingMaker? For reals?
[No, thank God. But now we use Exchange, which--at least if you're on a Mac--will make you pine for just about anything else. --J.]
Hi John, thanks for the post. Design is not an easy thing to discuss in public.
The color wheel with the icons looks nice and charming - especially in presentations.
Please consider the real world situation and respect some of the serious arguments in the previous comments - and go into reverse to a user friendly design.
I would love to see major guidelines respected by Adobe.
- Color blindness
- Missleading 2-letter abbreviations
- Downscaling to 16x16 Pixels
- Spatial frequency uniqueness
In case you need some arguments:
http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/icon_analysis
I was hoping the icons would be Flash .swf's infused with some amazing AE8 animation...and I know you guys are joking about this. lol December fools joke, right? Or you're waiting to unleash them on a confused and saddened audience for Christmas? Either way, I understand you have to spend way more time on security and anti-piracy measures than on icons, so no love lost. But yeah these basic blocks are ugly. Cheers
From Apple's Human User Interface Guidelines:
"Third-party applications enhance this package by delivering specific vertical solutions with sophisticated features and behaviors that are consistent with Apple guidelines."
In the chapter titled "Attractive Appearance" Apple has this to say to 3rd party developers about the way their applications graphics and ICONS should look:
"From packaging to user interface polish, make sure your software looks professionally designed.
- Use high-quality graphics and icons. If needed, contract with a professional graphic design firm to create these for you."
I am sorry to say, Adobe, as a loyal user of your products on both the Mac and PC platform, you have disappointed me for the first time. A company that stands for communication and design, how can you possibly state that these icons convey either one of those attributes.
Here's a test showing my Windows XP layout and the new 16x16 icons in the taskbar.
This is an animated GIF that will switch between CS2 and CS3 icons every five seconds.
http://www.techwarrior.cx/~roliver/cs3-icons.gif
Granted, I know that the real icons will be optimized for 16x16, but this gives some idea of the monotony that these little squares create. They all blend together to my eyes. Nothing pops out.
I'm all for design simplicity, but these new "icons" (and I use the term loosely) are an embarrassment. I, too, thought they were beta placeholders when I first saw them, but apparently they're the real deal.
What further muddies the water is that some of the icons are in fact true icons (Acrobat, Flash Player, Adobe Connect, e.g.)! Doesn't this mixing of graphic icons with simple letters in boxes violate the whole idea of using icons in the first place (i.e., design consistency)?
As a designer and design teacher any student who presented these icons for a final grade would sadly flunk.
This will get pretty confusing when it comes to other applications out there. I think Print Shop also has a PS as it's icon. When I first downloaded and installed the Photoshop beta I was a little concerned that I had downloaded the wrong thing because that icon did not look right. The wheel also reveals another thing. Adobe has too many products and thus stealing too many letters from other developers who might want to use the same initials for something. Seriously, for the sake of international consistency change them back to something graphical.
it looks like a corporate, cheesey powerpont slide. If there is a metaphor, it's not a good one.
You think the icons are bad, wait til you see the new CS3 toolbar...
http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/2789/cs3toolbarop4.gif
[Hah! What you don't know is that the icons will be translated to Sanskrit, and you'll need to mouse over them to hear an audio version of each. ;-) --J.]
eeewwww.
I agree with everyone here, the new US currency does look like "Monopoly Money"!
What were they thinking? I feel the spending juices flowing right out of my balanced body now that money doesn't look the same. How will I buy anything with confidence again?
;)
I'm an icon designer by profession. I for one understand Adobe's move to using the two letter product name of the products as most users on the forum refer to them anyway by their two letter name (DW for Dreamweaver, FL for Flash, PS for Photoship, AI for Illustrator, etc). I think this is a great idea, but I just wish the icons were not color coded according to their use, but instead may maintain a light linear red gradient [Adobe's official color] and place a hint or faded icon of the product that we're all familiar with, then include the two letter acronym, somewhere at the bottom right corner with a smaller type. That way, imho, it looks a bit more stylish than bland.
I'll create a prototype and post it over a dA, if anyone's interested.
Not too much to add outside of saying I don't like the new icons. They are just plain and don't pop out like they used to. They're missing a flare that makes each application uniquely identifiable; or at least distinguishable to a higher degree than these represent.
Ha ha ha, ha ha.
Best practical joke ever!
Looking forward to seeing the real icons in the final release.
[When did I say, or even imply, that this doesn't matter? Obviously it does, or people wouldn't be so vocal in their reactions. --J.]
I think what people are referring to when they mention you saying "it doesn't really matter" is your comments below:
[Not dismissing your opinion at all, but isn't it nice that in this world, at the end of 2006, it's computer iconography that constitutes our nightmares? We are very lucky to have literacy, intelligence, and leisure enough to give a damn about this stuff. --J.]
[Because of some icons...? I mean, really? --J.]
While I agree with your comments in the context you were responding, I think people had their opinions in their heads and saw those responses and came up with your argument is "it doesn't really matter".
[Okay, that's useful feedback--thanks. It's just that I'm jumping between these comments & reading about all the evil stuff going on in the world, not to mention all the serious computer science/project management/etc. that constitutes building Photoshop, and I'm a little bewildered that the icons can generate so much Sturm und Drang. --J.]
Anyhow, the link given by ethan that shows a screenshot of what his dock would look like with the icons, looks FAR better than the colour wheel. While I still don't like the icons as much as the previous MM ones, the colour wheel itself confuses people since there would seem to be an implied association between applications according to the colour wheel, when there clearly is not.
The apps have kept their old colours, which is fine - I use Flex, Flash, and Fireworks and could easily identify them on my desktop according to colour. If the colours had changed in accordance to the colour wheel analogy where the colours indicated similar functionality (which I considered for a moment) can you imagine the outcries then?! Photoshop, Fireworks, etc. all in yellow shades, or blue shades, ugh. You'd be opening the wrong program all the time.
What people seem to forget is the important icons aren't the app icons at all but the file icons. As long as I can identify an FLA from a PNG and those from any other icon on my computer I'm happy. Any chance you could post those?
On the one hand, I'm probably going to only have Dreamweaver and Photoshop in my dock. Those two are different enough in color that I won't worry about it. Secondly, I usually use Quicksilver to launch apps, so the icon doesn't really matter in that respect.
On the other hand, these icons seem like really cheap throwaways. Jack, you can make fun of the Apple HIG if you want, but those guidelines are GOOD guidelines, darn it, and I think all the artistic graphic designers see the "periodic table" look as just plain old lazy. You're dealing with artistic people, here, and I think they want an artistic icon set.
When it comes down to it, it's the program, not the icon that makes it. However, I think you're going to find people copying the old .icns files out of their CS2 package and swapping that out. Iconfactory will have tons of replacements for people to use. We'll have to see how things come out, but I think that if most people end up swapping the icon, it indicates a poor design choice on Adobe's part, no matter how much the company likes them. (It reminds me of the utterly failed NY Islanders "fisherman" logo.)
I've just created a quick prototype of what I think the entire logo should look like instead as a splash screen or Mac icon.
You guys can find it here:
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/45106214/
Maybe it can spark a sense of creativity and others can contribute too, since I know that Adobe listen's to the community.
Cheers!
Oh lordy... I have to issue a complaint on this one as well. I have to agree with the guy way at the top complaing about text icons. Given that an icon that simply said "This is an icon" works, it really doesn't give any, I don't know, personality to the program. Having done icon design in the past I've always felt a good icon set added, uh, I guess a bit of "flair" to the program they're in. Now, more or less I'm talking about icons inside a program interfaces and such, but still... Ps does work for Photoshop, but that really tell us what it is Photoshop can do? It shows us so far that Photoshop can make a dark blue box with two letters and a neat lighting effect. Whoo... You know, Illustrator CS2 has a great icon and splash screen that shows what it is the program can do.
Given that simplicity can work, I think you guys are producing the wrong type of sortware to implement that much simplicity. If you guys were making C++ compilers and the icon said C++, that works. These are graphical design software programs, you guys have to show it off! Given, it sounds stupid argument over simple icons and splash screens, but really, looking back at the other splash screens and icon sets, this is a let down and I do hope it's a practical joke and you're waiting to go live with a bigger, badder set. Hell, if anything give us the option to revert to the CS2 icon set.
You've got to be kidding...
Letters and colours how obtuse.
Not to mention an extreme waste of a once strong brand.
I wished Adobe ocntinued the Macromedia Icon System. That gesture / rounded type letters rock! Its very easy to identify what program it is from and they are also very good looking.
[Well, apparently the design team that created them didn't think the approach they'd taken previously would scale across the whole Adobe product line. --J.]
Calling your designers lazy isn't calling them "names."
[Dismissing the work of a team of people with a single epithet is, itself, lazy. By all means disagree with this design choice. That's completely cool & healthy. But saying people are lazy & "suck" isn't real useful, not to mention polite. --J.]
You asked for comments and you got them.
[I didn't, actually. --J.]
The verdict is in: Your icons suck.
As a designer who has been using Adobe products for the past fifteen-or-so years, I must say I'm SEVERELY saddened by Adobe's lack of creativity with these icons. I mean, this is a company that is supposed to be in tune with designers and artists, who in turn are VISUAL people! Hope they get rid of the person who came up with this rediculous idea before he/she can do more damage!
Very very ugly! Don't do this! This icons are very ugly!
These icons are bad and you should feel bad.
[I do, Dan, even though I had nothing to do with creating them. I take everything about Photoshop personally. I probably shouldn't, but passion's kind of a bitch. --J.]
I'm going to have to chime in here and say that while the element table idea is cute, it does not hold up for icon work anymore like it did when Macromedia was doing it with only a few apps.
I predict these icons will work in the Start Menu for me because I usually sort it by name and then just look up the product's name. But in my Mac OS X Dock, this is going to get unbearable.
Let's face it... The Mac Intel-native qualities of this release are one of the main reasons Adobe is doing CS3... Please don't leave Mac users with a bad taste in their mouths with regard to icon work. We're snobs about that kind of thing.
I know this has been linked to already, but it's satire, and I think it makes a very strong argument:
http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/2789/cs3toolbarop4.gif
I strongly urge you guys to get the head designers behind this look and feel to read through the public's reaction to this design decision.
Gee, I thought this was a parody at first. (!)
The only thing it has going for it is that there's no question what application each icon stands for now. Really, what could be more meaninglessly random than a feather, a star, a butterfly and a flower? I prefer these to the last generation only in the name of clarity. But I still wish they hadn't yanked Aphrodite and the eye just as they were reaching iconic status.
[Yeah, I actually had *much* bigger problems with that move than with any of this. I note with some relish that the Lightroom team has appropriated the eye for their beta splash screen. :-) --J.]
@Jericho,
Yeah, I like that idea, it really helps to have an icon with the two letters incorporated. Nice design!
Feine Ikons, ich bin sehr angetan. Das "wheel"-Konzept überzeugt und im Dock (Mac) fallen die Programm-Ikons angenehm auf.
The reason for the fuss is simple. Graphic icons grab the brains pattern recognition system easily. There is ample evidence for facial recognition in newborn babies, for instance. We are not born with inherent ability to recognize letters. Those are harder to detect. There is a pause every time the brain tries to wrap around some pattern. The longer the pause (characters vs graphics) the more the discomfort and frustration. Certainly, abbreviations can be learned. But can they be learned as easily as graphics? I don't think so and obviously neither does this crew.
Think of it this way: Why is creating graphical icons so hard? Because the designer is trying to cram much more recognizable information into the tiny space for the icon. That requires effort. Putting AE into the icon? Not so much. So there is less information being passed to the user.
Just my $/50
Awe man... I can just see it now, at the beginning of my work day, i'll be opening 10 different programs trying to remember which is which.
And is "Ai" Illustrator? If so, why does that one have the "Adobe" appended to it and not the rest?
Looks more like a period table than anything else.
I can't say I've ever felt so compelled to leave a comment about an icon as I am right now.
The fact is, the consensus is these new icons are less than what would be expected from the king of design companies... Adobe.
I would imagine that you could pluck out 5 random designers and 4 out of 5 would tell you all the design principals (especially as they relate to icon design) that are being ignored in this new set.
These icons evoke zero feeling. As others, I too assumed the photoshop icon was nothing more than a place holder that was slapped in by coders that have little interest or knowledge of design.
John, you have been very defensive of the the new icons, in part because I assume you had a hand in the development of them. It's an awful feeling when people do not like something you have put great time and thought into and going on the defensive is the natural reaction. However, more important than defending yourself would be to listen to the sheer outcry of your users. The consensus of this group and others on the web are very clear: we dont like them.
[I am listening, Emery, but for the record, I had nothing to do with their creation. I can take neither praise nor blame on this. I'm simply the messenger. So it's more important that the folks responsible for the design are listening, and they are. What they do with this feedback is not my call. --J.]
Here's hoping that you will hear our cries and reconsider the icons so on CS3 release day we can all have a shiny new icons bouncing in our docks.
I actually thought 'Fx' was After Effects until I saw 'AE'. (That actually would have been kind of cool in this spectrum.)
It's bad, really bad. Go back to the drawing board.
I love the new icons…
Illustrator, InDesign and Phostoshop live next to each other in my Dock… finally I know which is which again. And the periodic style fits 2007 imo
;)
Wow, I really like that reimagined icon from Jericho (although I'd be interested to see a version that's scaled down to the size it would actually be used at. (I just did a quick resizing at Photoshop and at 16x16, the reimagined icon doesn't really work). In any case, I like something along those lines much better than the periodic table look.
As with others, my concerns with the iconset are:
1) Usage by those who are colorblind.
2) Internationalization.
3) Having to think in order to figure out what some of the two letters stand for.
4) Distinguishing between a number of icons when they are all in the dock.
The feather of Photoshop or the butterfly of InDesign are not exactly crystal clear at first look either, but they work over time as the brain connects the two. And while the meaning may not be immediately obvious, once those connections are made, seeing the feather gives an "Ah ha!" as well as a subconcious connotation that this is a program that is not just pixels and numbers: it has a feather; this is art.
What sort of connotation does Ps have? Yes, the colors each have their own connotations. But to me, the periodic table icons scream out Adobe 'Scientific' Suite rather than Adobe 'Creative' Suite.
gee, these icons look as unoriginal as milli vanilli. seriously, what is up with adobe? i know they're wanting to tie all their programs together with a cohesive theme, but what the hell happened to good old fashioned creativity?
Yes, and I just killed a puppy.
What, are you outraged? Why?
It's just that I'm jumping between these comments & reading about all the evil stuff going on in the world ... and I'm a little bewildered that a puppy can generate so much Sturm und Drang.
Not dismissing your opinion at all, but isn't it nice that in this world, at the end of 2006, it's little puppies that constitutes our nightmares?
See, this is the “it does not matter” attitude that people complained about. It is about attitude, not word by word quoting.
Ok, now something more constructive (I hope).
As all most of the others, I don’t like the icons. I do understand the color idea, and I like it. My guess is that the color will be used throughout the application (install time, splash-screen, about, help, manual, box, etc.)
But the letters are a terrible idea. Images are better than letters, because of the human evolution. Someone who did some driving in Europe and in US can tell the difference. The European traffic signs are international, easy to identify and see from great distances. The US signs are for English speakers only, and from distance they are all a black scribble on white background.
Please, listen to all the comments here, and take a look at the Office icons. Same idea (one color for each application), but a real graphic. C’mon, it is painful to give Microsoft vs. Adobe as an example of good design, but it is true.
I know it is difficult to design meaningful, creative, and beautifull icons for so many applications, but don’t give up. We love the Adobe apps, and we only want the best for them. Including the best icons, really.
Shape is a powerful (and necessary) identifier in icon work... With this new icon suite, you lose that.
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/7125/masksqh9.png
I'm sure most Mac users can identify almost all of the top apps by their icon shape alone. Obviously, it's not so easy with the bottom selection of icons.
[It's an interesting point. Of course, had you picked Safari, Aperture, Internet Connect, DVD Studio Pro, etc., it would've been a bit different, given that they'll all circular. --J.]
These icons are terrible. Guys at Adobe probably need to be reminded what ICON really means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_%28disambiguation%29
Really bad...
Not much to add, other than just letting you know I use Adobe/Macromedia products every single day. I see what you guys were trying to do, and I'm sure people could get used to them over time. But you shouldn't mess around with icons in this way. I'll add my voice to the din.
Don't like these at all. Please change them.
The only thoughtfulness these "icons" (really they're just abbreviations) show is at the system level. Obviously the design team saw it as a problem of designing a family of several dozen icons, rather than finding ways to make each application special.
Looking at an individual icon, out of context of the whole product line, I see no thoughtfulness whatsoever. The Photoshop icon has no idea, no artistic effort.
Application icons are the front line of my impressions about Adobe. Like it or not, I will now think of Adobe as the "thinking inside the box" "giagantic rude dock icon" company.
Possibly the worst icon set ever, surely this is a joke?
This surely is a joke, right? Seriously? If not, then I have in one mouse click lost almost all of my respect for you guys. It has become very apparent that suits and not artists are making these decisions now. This is just plain sad.
[I don't recall ever having seen Michael, Ryan, or any of those guys in a suit, and love it or hate it, the redesign is their baby. --J.]
I love these icons. They communicate the product well, are easy to distinguish, and will lead to me clicking the correct icon more often, which is where the current set fails. Icon design is not about making something pretty, it's about making something that works right. Nice work.
Adobe isn't a design-driven company. It is a marketing-driven company.
[I will let the Experience Design team know...
Love the new work or hate it, as far as I know the team had pretty free reign to create what they deem the best possible solution. --J.]
Also, remember that this is not just about the icons. The same aesthetic (or lack thereof) is reflected in the splash screens and the in-product branding also. It will also feature on the packaging.
[No, it will not. I'd rather you didn't make pronouncements on things you either haven't seen, or have seen & have agreed not to discuss. --J.]
John, this isn't a post, but a site bug. In your site's comments forms I have a problem. In Safari pressing 'Tab' predictably takes my cursor to the next form container, but in Firefox 2.0 for the Mac and IE 6 for Windows pressing 'Tab' takes me to the top of the page. Thought you'd like to know.
[Thanks for the heads-up, Jason. I'm using a standard template that came with Movable Type, so I'm not sure how to change tab order. I also can't get the comments on the right to look less than awful in Mac FF. I live in email now, and my CSS skills kind of suck... --J.]
The icons work. Ignore the whiners - you've made a good decision, ahead of it's time.
MK
What all y'all who are criticizing these icons don't realize is that Adobe has super-secret insider info that the dock is going to be circular in Leopard. What Adobe has done here is designed the icons to suit that dock: it's going to look just like the color wheel seen in the linked image, and it'll look much better in that context.
Or, you know, maybe not.
Great set of icons!
I, for one, love the new icons, and I desperately hope all this negative feedback doesn't cause Adobe to change them before release.
Admittedly, I have low expectations given the last two generations of icons which were pretty but totally and utterly useless.
It's so weird that so many people bash the icons used. Step back and think about what everyone uses the programs for and not just you. You can't put an icon to PhotoShop because it does so many different things (web, video prep, photo manipulation, etc.) and I mean the same goes for most of the "mainstream products".
I for one think that a scalable and easy to read icon is much better than some picture that isn't viewable at 16x16.
Getting a similarity between 20+ products is hard to do, but for the cs3 family of icons it will be a snap to say "Yup, that's a cs3 family product". The colour wheel philosophy is just the cherry on top of the sweet cheesecake.
Yea, and everyone wants Jeb Bush for 2008!
[The completeness of that non sequitur is really kind of refreshing. :-) --J.]
Get real Adobe. These are baaaad.
I actually like them. When I installed Adobe Reader 8 (a universal binary) I loved the new icon! I had it open next to Adobe Acrobat 6 and well I liked the new one. Now I can't wait to install PS3 beta so I can have matching icons. I would have preferred that instead of Ps it had the old eye from PS7. The whole wierd icon thing from Cs1 and CS2 is odd. I liked right before that PS7, Illustrator 10 etc). By the way - why is Indesign now Pink and why does Illsutrator have the file extension (AI)?
Looks like these icons were done by a teen on work experience. I just want to know what crazy art director signed them off.
[Really? Because that info is in the four-line post. --J.]
What the hell did you guys do to the Adobe CS icons? These look like pure and total crap, hard to distinguish between them especially if your color blind or sight impared at all - For the love of Jesus, PUT THEM BACK TO THE WAY THEY WERE!!
I wonder...is the FM icon for FrameMaker? Is there going to even be a new version of that ever? Does it even fit a niche anymore?
I think Adobe should be congratulated. Icon design has traditionally been a difficult task for new developers, and historically professional graphic design has been one of the clearest differentiators between big companies and small individual developers when comparing programs. Now, Adobe has lowered the bar -- if this is professional, then anybody can be professional! I bet someone could easily throw together a CS3 Icon Construction Program and reduce even further this barrier to entry into the software market.
Why is it that I feel compelled to defend John here? Oh yeah, people are not reading the entire set of comments and then making the same incorrect statements and taking the icon announcement personally.
Holy crap people, John didn't say it but I will: they're just icons. Have your opinions, say they're really bad or really good, but people are coming off like the Adobe just kicked them in the teeth. In an age of typing rather than talking we've degraded into rants and personal attacks.
Just so the next people making comments don't have to scroll so far to see the answer to the question they'll probably ask again:
"why does Illsutrator have the file extension (AI)"
"And is "Ai" Illustrator? If so, why does that one have the "Adobe" appended to it and not the rest?"
John already answered this many comments before:
["AI" is the historic abbreviation for "Illustrator." Yeah, it's a little quirky, but it's been that way for 20 years, and the design team wanted to respect that history. --J.]
I think I'm the only one that likes the new icons. I like them much better than the CS2 icons, at any rate.
At least with 2 letters on the icons, you can guess which app goes with which icon. With the CS2 icons, you have a butterfly, a feather, a flower--all with surprisingly similar color palattes which makes picking which app you need out of the dock at a glance, impossible, and with a scrutinized look, difficult.
Plus, it appeals to the chemistry geek in me. ;)
Umm....
Hmm....
Umm.....
Oh, I get it. April Fools!
Right?
Hmmm....guess not.
Seriously, are these going to be the new icons? I thought that the Creative Suite icons were already pretty ugly and non-informative, but after seeing the PS CS3 Beta icon, I assumed what others have -- it's just a place holder. Is this seriously going to be the icon? If so, I'll have to switch PS and Illustrator back to the PS7 and Illustrator 10 icons. At least those icons made a little more sense, or at least had a built up history behind them.
What does a feather tell me about an application? Not much, unless it involves learning how to stuff a peasant.
Granted, not all icons give a detailed idea what an application does (Adium's icon is a duck...but it is an instant messenger client, so how does that make sense), but many icons (especially in OS X) DO make sense and give some indication what the application is all about.
All I can say is booooo!
I think the general reaction can be summed up here:
http://www.writeonlymemory.com/images/fu.png
[Classy... but good for a chuckle. ;-) --J.]
John, does it by any chance has some sort of meaning in the color, something like flash is between illustrator and after effects, cause it does vector animation ?
[No, as far as I know the color choices were made for historical reasons (e.g. keeping Illustrator yellow). --J.]
It seems most of the nay-sayers are Mac & OS X owners :-)
Personally I've been working at Adobe TS for two years now on both Mac (secondary) and Windows (primary) and I use all the graphics and video applications on a daily basis and I still have to hover over the CS2 icons to tell them apart on OS X. On Windows I simply have a separate menu near the systray with around 30 Adobe products in it spelled out with names, so there it is not really an issue. So I have to say these icons (and the splash screens) looks much better and much more professional than the old ones. The new blue Ps splash screen is simple and clean and same with the new orange/yellow splash of Ai.
evan (and the rest too): For you that wonders, why Ai instead of Il? well there's the reason right there, in some fonts you cannot tell a capital I from a small l. Internally we use the Ai abbreviation for Illustrator just to avoid confusion.
I guess my pro-new-icon bias might also be because I am a Windows person. The OS X interface (after two years of using it) still feels very awkward to me and the lack of a maximize function and native MDI makes me cry every day :)
Simpler looking = better in my eyes, both from a design point and usability point.
Congrats to whoever came up with the idea of simple icons :)
I like the new icons. I found the old icons to be a weak representation of the suite, and these are very clear as to which product is which without being intrusive.
My desktop area doesn't need to be pretty, it needs to get out of my way while I do the design work. These icons suit that purpose well.
So I quite like them - they'll be much more distinguishable at tiny sizes than the CS 2 ones. My one query is why Illustrator is "Ai" for ADOBE Illustrator, whereas no other icon contains the Adobe portion of their name? I suppose Il doesn't look so hot, but doesn't the naming inconsistency drive you nuts?
Ugh... All the more reason to stay with the previous versions of the apps...
[I guess I have a hard time imagining that people whose livelihoods are presumably connected to their software tools make multi-hundred-dollar buying decisions based on easily-switchable icons. --J.]
I actually like the new icons. I wish Dreamweaver had the iconic 'd' in it instead of Dw, but I LOVE the periodic-table look, and this should certainly help out with some confusion between applications (ie, look at history of Illustrator icons -> Ai 10 to CS).
These icons are very clean, simple and easy to understand, they are great. If only your products reflected clean and simple. When I think adobe I think slow, and bloated. It is the sad truth. Foxit PDF reader is so much quicker than Adobes PDF reader, why is that? Photoshop is a powerful tool, I just wish Adobe focued on optimization on all their products. Good work on the Icons though!
Seriously, I thought this was a joke, but I guess not. What are you people thinking?
I haven't seen anything this misguided since the "Flower Power" iMac.
Ugly. Frickin' ugly and equally misguided.
yes, by posting to a weblog that has comments enabled, you did. that's the current method of communication "out here."
and for whatever it's worth, I agree 100% that the new icons are fugly and worse than useless - they'll add to dock confusion rather than reduce it.
My above statement was rude and didn't explain itself.
I disagree with Adobe's attempt to unify all of these products under one brand. The final design theme really is beautiful. I saw a screenshot of the Photoshop beta and the splash page is very beautiful and a big departure from past versions. However, I question the wisdom of making it obvious to everyone that Adobe owns such a large amount of the design (web, motion, graphic, video) tools used in the industry. They end up looking like Microsoft. The relationships between applications like Freehand, Fireworks and Illustrator are not apparent. I don't understand why a 'highly organized' company that has a tool for everything has these redundant applications (GoLive and Dreamweaver). If they truly want to give an image of product unity they should reevaluate their product line. From here (and I mean the view of the icon color wheel) it looks like some of the more recently acquired products are merely getting repackaged. I would like to see this color wheel represent a product line made up of a variety of unique elements that all contribute to the whole.
[Thanks for the additional info and perspective, Jason. As I say, I'm all for healthy dialog about this stuff. I'm just the messenger, and I kind of wish there were a proper forum for the design team to interact with customers. This seems to be all we have at the moment, though. --J.]
As a senior visual designer for a nameless ;-) company, I think the new Icons are fantastic. I was always clicking on ImageReady instead of PhotoShop or Illustrator in my Dock. I do hope though that Photoshop & Illustrators colors are different enough that I don't get confused.
Take a look at it in my Dock. It stands out perfectly!
http://courtkizer.com/photoshopcs3_in_dock.png
I see a rectangular icon in my Dock with "Ps" written on it, and the first thought to cross my mind is, "PostScript document".
Wow, these are some of the ugliest and least descriptive icons I have seen for any application in easily 5 years. 2 letter abbreviates for an application are a terrible way to drum up brand recognition. Just look at the Adobe logo, you don't see them going with Ab for a logo...it just doesn't make sense.
You really can't come up with something a bit more creative than 2 letters? Wow, just wow.
Well, I know I (and 99% of other users) will promptly be replacing these icons the second we install your product.
Many consider art/design successful not if everyone likes it, but if it polarizes viewers to be passionate about them.
The long list of comments is a testament to that!
That said, I hate these new icons. I want Venus back.