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This is what I wish we were doing with Retina displays and such: making truly nice artwork instead of whatever single-colored squares and circles pass for icons

This is what I wish we were doing with Retina displays and such: making truly nice artwork instead of whatever single-colored squares and circles pass for icons these days. :/ Yes, it takes tremendously more work and is difficult to get right on a variety of screen sizes but there are also multi-billion-dollar companies that are in charge of this and I think it’s time they hired some more artists.

chongli 5y ago
Photorealistic icons [1] are much harder to parse, visually, than very simple ones [2]. In general, graphical UIs have gotten far more visually noisy in the past few decades. This has made computers much harder and more fatiguing to use. So often we seem to have “UX” designers changing things for the sake of change rather than undertaking the legitimately hard effort (UI studies) of trying to determine what will make the interface easier to use. [1] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cTU5hVb22k0/R6u0lS9EFuI/AAAAAAAABXg/GO_MGa7rHiA/s400/Photorealistic+PNG+ICONs.jpg https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cTU5hVb22k0/R6u0lS9EFuI/AAAAAAAAB... [2] http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Susan_Kare_Prints.jpg http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Susan_Ka...
- EGreg 5y ago
  You are showing consumer electronics in the first one, and attempting to argue that this is how icons on the MacOS and iOS looked during skeumorphism. The whole trend to do away with Skeumorphism led to things like Google’s Chrome browser having an empty white area where you apparently have to know you should tap to type the URL. It is still there on iOS. Because showing browser chrome as slightly 3D is apparently “too skeumorphic” and distracting — better not to know where the website begins and ends lol
- webwielder2 5y ago
  macOS and iOS for one are far more consistent and un-busy than they were from 2000—2014 or so. Apple had poor visual design discipline and deployed multiple styles across their apps and OS, many of them garish and cluttered. Also, you replied to a post yearning for skeuomorphic icons and bemoaning the clean shapes of today, which contradicts your point 2.
- anthk 5y ago
  Please, have a look on Haiku OS' icons.
  - gattilorenz 5y ago
    They are not photorealistic? But also not necessarily very good icons, to me (not quite representative, at least in some cases), so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make... https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/64x64/App_Finance.png https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/... https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/64x64/App_Mail.png https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/... https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/64x64/App_People.png https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/...
    - handrous 5y ago
      Color and shape (outline, at least) differentiation making it easy to identify icons in one's peripheral vision is a really nice property for icons, and BeOS is pretty good on those fronts. The main sin of the "photoreal" icon set a couple posts up was that it leaned too heavily on two colors (black and silvery-grey), not that it was photoreal.
EGreg 5y ago
So you LIKE Skeumorphism, you say? SHOCKING. Many people do, like Steve Jobs did: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234
- makecheck 5y ago
  I think it was particularly egregious when macOS Big Sur came out. It was abundantly clear that they no longer cared enough to even apply a basic sense of unified style in their artwork, with a weird mix of 2D-ish and 3D-ish icons, every color combination imaginable, etc. And on top of it, so many of the “new” icons were just plain ugly and some were outright weird, and many had really basic problems like improper shadow effects. Frankly they should have delayed the entire OS release by two months just to fix the icons, and it’s still in that bad a state. It is even more frustrating that the OS is slowly being locked down so much that you basically can’t “fix” UI annoyances anymore, not without rebooting into Void My Warranty mode. You can’t fix bits and pieces of apps because they’ll no longer pass code-signing and fail to launch. In the old days you could pretty much hack any cool icons you wanted into any part of the system, and it was really amazing what people came up with.
- ksec 5y ago
  It is so so rare to read a blog that shares the many of the non-mainstream views. Especially for naming Forstall. Firing him was a power play. And the quoting that iOS 7 design decision from Ive. >“When we sat down last November (to work on iOS 7), we understood that people had already become comfortable with touching glass, they didn’t need physical buttons, they understood the benefits,” says Ive Along with Federighi's comments. I still remember reading it at the time saddens me. They then spend the next three version of iOS trying to walk back all these flat, glass, no button decisions. Another 6 years before they rework all icons to the old circular proportion. One thing to nitpick though was that Steve was well aware of the iPhone Plus or iPhone Phablet market condition. As it was in shown in the one of the court case email. And he was willing to go with it so he is not too stubborn about the size. / width. I also think it was the turning point of his philosophy. Steve always wanted the iPhone to be an "smart" appliance. Hence it could be small, and used one handed. It was first and foremost an appliance, easy to use devices, Apps on top are something extra. Except the model has shifted to your Phone being the computer. And Apple no longer has his intuition to guide them.
timeon 5y ago
Most of preinstalled app on macOS are still like that.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  A clock icon showing the time and a calendar icon showing the date is two small details which make me (Android user) immediately happy to use iOS (macOS Calendar.app also shows the date). The clock even shows the seconds!

chongli 5y ago

Photorealistic icons [1] are much harder to parse, visually, than very simple ones [2]. In general, graphical UIs have gotten far more visually noisy in the past few decades. This has made computers much harder and more fatiguing to use. So often we seem to have “UX” designers changing things for the sake of change rather than undertaking the legitimately hard effort (UI studies) of trying to determine what will make the interface easier to use. [1] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cTU5hVb22k0/R6u0lS9EFuI/AAAAAAAABXg/GO_MGa7rHiA/s400/Photorealistic+PNG+ICONs.jpg https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cTU5hVb22k0/R6u0lS9EFuI/AAAAAAAAB... [2] http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Susan_Kare_Prints.jpg http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Susan_Ka...

EGreg 5y ago
You are showing consumer electronics in the first one, and attempting to argue that this is how icons on the MacOS and iOS looked during skeumorphism. The whole trend to do away with Skeumorphism led to things like Google’s Chrome browser having an empty white area where you apparently have to know you should tap to type the URL. It is still there on iOS. Because showing browser chrome as slightly 3D is apparently “too skeumorphic” and distracting — better not to know where the website begins and ends lol
webwielder2 5y ago
macOS and iOS for one are far more consistent and un-busy than they were from 2000—2014 or so. Apple had poor visual design discipline and deployed multiple styles across their apps and OS, many of them garish and cluttered. Also, you replied to a post yearning for skeuomorphic icons and bemoaning the clean shapes of today, which contradicts your point 2.
anthk 5y ago
Please, have a look on Haiku OS' icons.
- gattilorenz 5y ago
  They are not photorealistic? But also not necessarily very good icons, to me (not quite representative, at least in some cases), so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make... https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/64x64/App_Finance.png https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/... https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/64x64/App_Mail.png https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/... https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/64x64/App_People.png https://github.com/darealshinji/haiku-icons/blob/master/png/...
  - handrous 5y ago
    Color and shape (outline, at least) differentiation making it easy to identify icons in one's peripheral vision is a really nice property for icons, and BeOS is pretty good on those fronts. The main sin of the "photoreal" icon set a couple posts up was that it leaned too heavily on two colors (black and silvery-grey), not that it was photoreal.

EGreg 5y ago

So you LIKE Skeumorphism, you say? SHOCKING. Many people do, like Steve Jobs did: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234

makecheck 5y ago
I think it was particularly egregious when macOS Big Sur came out. It was abundantly clear that they no longer cared enough to even apply a basic sense of unified style in their artwork, with a weird mix of 2D-ish and 3D-ish icons, every color combination imaginable, etc. And on top of it, so many of the “new” icons were just plain ugly and some were outright weird, and many had really basic problems like improper shadow effects. Frankly they should have delayed the entire OS release by two months just to fix the icons, and it’s still in that bad a state. It is even more frustrating that the OS is slowly being locked down so much that you basically can’t “fix” UI annoyances anymore, not without rebooting into Void My Warranty mode. You can’t fix bits and pieces of apps because they’ll no longer pass code-signing and fail to launch. In the old days you could pretty much hack any cool icons you wanted into any part of the system, and it was really amazing what people came up with.
ksec 5y ago
It is so so rare to read a blog that shares the many of the non-mainstream views. Especially for naming Forstall. Firing him was a power play. And the quoting that iOS 7 design decision from Ive. >“When we sat down last November (to work on iOS 7), we understood that people had already become comfortable with touching glass, they didn’t need physical buttons, they understood the benefits,” says Ive Along with Federighi's comments. I still remember reading it at the time saddens me. They then spend the next three version of iOS trying to walk back all these flat, glass, no button decisions. Another 6 years before they rework all icons to the old circular proportion. One thing to nitpick though was that Steve was well aware of the iPhone Plus or iPhone Phablet market condition. As it was in shown in the one of the court case email. And he was willing to go with it so he is not too stubborn about the size. / width. I also think it was the turning point of his philosophy. Steve always wanted the iPhone to be an "smart" appliance. Hence it could be small, and used one handed. It was first and foremost an appliance, easy to use devices, Apps on top are something extra. Except the model has shifted to your Phone being the computer. And Apple no longer has his intuition to guide them.

timeon 5y ago

Most of preinstalled app on macOS are still like that.

Fnoord 5y ago
A clock icon showing the time and a calendar icon showing the date is two small details which make me (Android user) immediately happy to use iOS (macOS Calendar.app also shows the date). The clock even shows the seconds!