Controversy: Adobe’s New Icons

December 21, 2006 at 7:57 am · Filed under Adobe, CS3

LifeClever has some insight about the new Adobe CS3 application icons in a recent post. I was shocked to find out that these icons were being considered final -- when I first installed a few of the CS3 beta programs months back I assumed they were put together by a developer who needed to distinguish between CS2 and the new beta apps. Certainly not an iconic design firm.

But, alas, they are sticking around and it was a conscious decision. LifeClever is written by a designer with MetaDesign, the agency which does a good portion of the branding for Adobe. He provides a color wheel diagram showing where all of the apps fit in the color scheme, and he also states that the system is based off of a "periodic table." I wish he would talk more about the process involved, but I understand needing to remain neutral in this situation.

I'll reserve judgment until the final release of CS3, because if the feedback I'm seeing around the 'net is heard by Adobe, I have a feeling Adobe and/or MetaDesign may make a change.

LifeClever's post can be found here:

http://www.lifeclever.com/2006/12/21/adobes-new-icons-love-or-hate-em/#comments

Permalink

Chanpory Rith said,

December 21, 2006 @ 9:00 am

Hey Jonny, thanks for the link and shout out! But, I’m a boy! ;-)

[ Errr... sorry! Not sure where that came from. Fixed! ]

Stacy Westbrook said,

December 21, 2006 @ 6:29 pm

I don’t especially care what they look like, I just want the design to stop changing. It’s a workflow pain in the ass to learn new icons all the time, only to find that I clicked on ImageReady when I meant Illustrator.

Brett Wickens said,

January 24, 2007 @ 11:51 pm

Contrary to Chanpory’s comments and those posted elsewhere, MetaDesign did not design the icons and color scheme for CS3 (et al) that have now been so widely published.

We recommended the idea of a mnemonic solution to desktop branding such a vast array of products from the newly merged companies, but we stopped working with Adobe in the spring of 2006 when much of their design efforts were shifted internally.

Brett Wickens
VP Creative Director
MetaDesignÂ®

jonnymac blog » CS3 Application Icons and Packaging Design said,

March 27, 2007 @ 8:16 pm

[...] in December I posted about the new Adobe product icons and the “controversy” regarding their design. At the time there were a lot of people blogging about how they didn’t like the new icons, and I [...]

jonnymac blog » CS3 Icon Branding Taken To The Next Level - The Rest Of Your Apps said,

May 24, 2007 @ 1:21 pm

[...] For more background on the subject, be sure to check out my prior post on the subject. [...]

Much Ado About Icons posts on Fancy That said,

June 19, 2007 @ 1:57 pm

[...] which themselves replaced our prized magnifying glass/eye and Venus on a half-shell. Heck, I even entered the fray a bit, complaining about previous workflow hitches when the icons were last [...]

arabalar said,

July 31, 2007 @ 9:19 am

they look awful.. I canâ€™t think of anything more unimaginitave and non-creative.

otomobil said,

March 27, 2008 @ 9:24 am

Non-iconic icons, not creative? Theyâ€™re right up there with dry water and cold heat.
Now, whether theyâ€™re practical is another matter. I think it helps to get as many visual clues as possible. Thatâ€™s the whole point of GUIs, remember Otherwise, we couldâ€™ve stayed with MS-DOS.

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