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I'm not sure about the 'excellent' part of the execution. The previous icons gave you more of an idea of what you were clicking on. The Word icon showed a W and

I'm not sure about the 'excellent' part of the execution. The previous icons gave you more of an idea of what you were clicking on. The Word icon showed a W and a sheet of papers with lines on it. Now, it's just a W on a striped background. Excel is an X. You have know before hand the name of every MS tool to figure out what the icons stand for. Which is OK for workers experienced with the Office tool suite, but for others, W and X are no clearer than Y or T. So, if the idea behind icons is to quickly locate the tools you need, even if you are not super-familiar with the tools, I think the previous icons served that purpose much better.

john-shaffer 6y ago
Those are some of the most confusing icons I've ever seen. WTF is Y with a few arcs? Even if I had memorized what every icon means, I can't tell them apart without looking closely because most have the same shape and similar colors. "Everything looks the same" is not good design.
_coveredInBees 6y ago
To each their own but I found their new redesign to be excellent and as someone who uses a fair number of their products, I've never had any issues differentiating one from another based on their icons. For starters, each product has a distinct icon color, which in and of itself makes a huge difference in usability and the ability to quickly determine which icon to click. This is something the Google redesign fails completely on. Secondly, every element behind the single-letter in each MS icon has distinctive elements that are related to the product. Excel actually has grid-cells to mimic worksheets in a minimalist fashion. Powerpoint has the pie-chart. One-Note has the fantastic minimalist binder with tabs in the background. Between the unique color and graphical elements associated with each product, there is plenty that helps a user easily distinguish one from the other while they all still have a cohesive aesthetic. I find it to be an outstanding redesign. In comparison, the Google redesign basically has almost none of the benefits above and makes it a lot harder to distinguish icons at a glance.

john-shaffer 6y ago

Those are some of the most confusing icons I've ever seen. WTF is Y with a few arcs? Even if I had memorized what every icon means, I can't tell them apart without looking closely because most have the same shape and similar colors. "Everything looks the same" is not good design.

_coveredInBees 6y ago

To each their own but I found their new redesign to be excellent and as someone who uses a fair number of their products, I've never had any issues differentiating one from another based on their icons. For starters, each product has a distinct icon color, which in and of itself makes a huge difference in usability and the ability to quickly determine which icon to click. This is something the Google redesign fails completely on. Secondly, every element behind the single-letter in each MS icon has distinctive elements that are related to the product. Excel actually has grid-cells to mimic worksheets in a minimalist fashion. Powerpoint has the pie-chart. One-Note has the fantastic minimalist binder with tabs in the background. Between the unique color and graphical elements associated with each product, there is plenty that helps a user easily distinguish one from the other while they all still have a cohesive aesthetic. I find it to be an outstanding redesign. In comparison, the Google redesign basically has almost none of the benefits above and makes it a lot harder to distinguish icons at a glance.