Adobe Re-Brand

[Toon]

All the new logo's love em or hate em we'll be seeing alot of them.

http://theflashblog.com/icons.html

[Toon]

Ryan Hicks, the Sr. Experience Designer at Adobe (and brainchild of the new branding?), defends the new designs with the following words:

“Honestly, we have been living with the icon system internally on our own machines for so long now that it’s a bit hard to remember what the big deal is. We’re as varied and hardcore a user group as will be found anywhere, we’ve found the stuff just works. Done.”

I think he means...

"We are one of the biggest software companies in the world why would we waste time designing great new icons, you're going to buy and use the software anyway, you don't have a choice really do you??"

[El Peligroso]

i'm not a 100% sure that a series of squares with initials on should qualify as an icon set...

i mean, just how much time do you think was spent on them???

[El Peligroso]

ten minutes, jobs a good 'un... see you in the boozer me thinks

[flashwiz]

Didnt i already post this or was that on the old forum ?

[Toon]

You did but this is the full set

[boomstation]

First reaction was "This is ****-poor", but I suppose the functionality may well be a big plus... The font though... Jesus. When you're at the forefront of design something a little more imaginative might have been nice.

[Toon]

I've had a quick look at the new reader and the icon doesn't bother me that much in the dock, if anything it's clearer. (gone back on my opinion now.)

[flashwiz]

Interesting to see what people are saying about these new icons, and the fact that they in the first instance appear to be probably very simple and easy to create. Yet in reality this couldnt be further from the truth. When I first saw the splash screen and application icon of Adobe Photoshop CS3 my thinking pattern was that Macromedia had its influence in the branding process, and that has turned out to be correct. All the new icons have been created by what was the old Macromedia design team.

The idea of using different colors for each application and the way the splash screen is organized for example. The color association that is carried throughout the product's desktop brand and primary imagery makes total sense to me. The absence of illustrative elements as we saw in previous versions needs really getting use to however as Toon as already mentioned, if you look in the Dock, most icons are like pictures and visually very detailed so it's like they are all shouting "choose me, me". Adobe's new icons are so basic and stand out instantly even in a crowded Dock. That's a thing Macromedia always had with their icons, you could immediately tell they belong together.

Because it's only two letters and I personally immediately see the "Ai" just by looking and not by a literal read. It was much harder to differentiate the previous ones, in fact I more than once confused ImageReady with Photoshop. The natural look didn't have any meaning other then being pretty to use as marketing collateral. With regards the typography, the font used in the icons was created by Robert Slimbach, known from typefaces like Adobe Garamond, Adobe Jenson, Myriad etc and is a one off font made exclusivel for Adobe. Also if your wondering why Acrobat Reader hasn't "Ar" as icon or "Pd" or something, just to take the same line with the rest of the products. The curvy triangle is so well known that it's obvious they kept using it for the icon. I think if the other applications had a similar icon over the years, they would have done the same. Since there are none they decided to use a two-letter mnemonic 'nickname' system as their primary identifier.

Other than that you have to think of how big or major an undertaking it is to revamp and re-brand both Adobe's and Macromedia's apps as one brand, we're talking thousands of icons in total so i think they have done a great job personally.

[Toon]

Great points and I think we all judged a little too quick.