New Adobe CS3 Icon Contest

Sorry, but there is no reason to call them icons if they are not iconic. Two letters in a square box does not an icon make. The ideal icon speaks on two levels, directly and intuitively. A well designed icon also speaks to both sides of the brain. There is a GOOD REASON that a stop sign is a red octagon with white letters, and not just a square with the word STOP. Think about it!

I for one love the new icons. As with most things on the internet, most of the complaints are coming from a small, vocal minority. As with most things, people only say anything when they don't like something. I believe this whole thing is blown out of proportion really, and I commend Adobe to sticking to their guns in the light of all the whiners and moaners out there.

Have to side with the "Hate the new icons" camp. Every icon in the doc has a shape to it. A square takes me back to the days before transparency!

-N

The new icons are *NOT* consistent.

I do not care that the new icons are simplistic or even that they do not look as nice as previous icons from Adobe or Macromedia, but it does bother me that the text is neither intuitive nor consistent. For example, "Adobe Illustrator" is represented as "Ai" (as opposed to "AI" or "Il") while "Adobe Photoshop" is represented as "Ps". And yet Adobe's legal text will probably still make a big deal about how Photoshop is not to be referred to as "Photoshop", but only as "Adobe Photoshop" and not really only that, but as "Adobe® Photoshop®".

Thank goodness Adobe can't trademark individual letters or they would probably do so and their legal department would probably notice the icon discrepancy and insist that "A®d®o®b®e® P®h®o®t®o®s®h®o®p®" could not be represented in icon form by any less than "A® P®s®".

Great. A dock full of letters. 'Q' for Quicktime, 'W' for Word, 'X' for Excel, 'P' for Powerpoint and now 'Ps' for Photoshop.

With all the nice icon stuff going on for iLife, I would have hoped Adobe could have come up with something a little more 'creative', given the nature of the product.

I like the way the iLife icons represent what each app is used for. A blue square with two letters in it doesn't really have the same effect.

This contest is a great idea, and much needed. The Adobe CS3 "icons" are the worst I've ever seen from a professional developer. They're a particularly ugly black eye for a design-oriented company like Adobe. It makes me wonder what OTHER poor design decisions were implemented in the upcoming Design Suite.

Yeah Matt, I don't know what you're talking about. I love the new icon set.

I like the new icons as well. I think it looks really odd in the color wheel and can lead to a bad impression there, but as far as dock icons I think they will work fine.

I am perplexed why the new release of Flex Builder didn't include the updated icon though. Seeing as the PS beta has the new icon as well as the recently updated RoboHelp.

Gimme my swanky new flex icon Adobe, damnit!!

I actually like the new CS3 icons. Simple, elegant and consistent. And I imagine that the block of them in my dock will stand out clearly from all the other apps, similar to the way the current Macromedia apps do.

@moo083 - that's what most people thought, until it was made official: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2006/12/the_other_cs3_icons.html