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I hope there will appear a trend where icons use different colors again after this particular trend blows over. Especially in painting programs where one shoul

I hope there will appear a trend where icons use different colors again after this particular trend blows over. Especially in painting programs where one should be able to be really productive I don't understand why they made the icons less distinguishable in this "remove all the colors" trend.

noir_lord 6y ago
At least in gimp and Inkscape you can restore the old colourful icons.
dragonwriter 6y ago
I think the current trend is for generic icon sets to be monochromatic or two-tone with the idea that the system applying them will apply one or two color(s) to them based on the semantics of their use and immediate context in the app plus the apps theming, rather than that they will be presented in end products without color.
qz2 6y ago
This whole thing isn't going to blow over until we have science fiction movie special effects foldable transparent displays with completely useless user interfaces that were designed by someone who doesn't have to use them daily but is suitably impressed by them anyway. (Think The Expanse) It was all down hill after windows 2000. Every visual cue in user interfaces such as depth, separation, colour, accelerator underlining and consistency is gone. I feel like I'm stroking a hairless, cold and thoroughly deceased cat most of the time. I suspect, much like most aspects of the human race, that the improvement will only come after a shitty UI causes an actual body count via some ambiguity. The post-mortem for those poor souls will be a couple of paragraphs in comp.risks digest.
- roywiggins 6y ago
  > A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program. http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1329 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1329
  - qz2 6y ago
    That's brilliant. I completely missed that in the numerous times I've read the book!
  - daxelrod 6y ago
    Another relevant Adams quip about modern interfaces from Restaurant at the End of The Universe: > “It’s the wild colour scheme that freaks me,” said Zaphod whose love affair with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight, “Every time you try to operate on of these weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?”
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  I'd lay the blame on Kai's power tools and their silly opaque discoverable interfaces. That's the start point of usability taking a back seat to designer bs.
brundolf 6y ago
Part of it may be technical. High-res, colored PNG icons a) are heavyweight, b) require you to ship multiple sizes, c) if you don't have a large enough version for a new display resolution it'll look blurry. This adds both process complexity and implementation complexity. Vectorized icons on the other hand take up much less memory and can auto-scale to different displays and use-cases. If you take it a step further and ship them as a font - which is the gold-standard these days - they can be stored even more compactly and worked with very easily on the web and otherwise, and can even be re-colored dynamically. But of course a font can only be rendered in one color at a time.
- mawise 6y ago
  Vector graphics can have colors...
  - brundolf 6y ago
    Yes but they still tend towards simpler shapes, and fonts can't have multiple colors
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      Fonts on Windows can have multiple colors [0], but it's not something you can currently expect to rely on cross-platform. [0] Fun fact: unlike other OSes, Windows emoji actually are implemented entirely in the font system as multi-color OpenType fonts. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2017/06/06/using-color-fonts-beautiful-text-icons/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2017/06/06/using-...
    - naikrovek 6y ago
      Fonts can indeed have multiple colors per character/glyph/codepoint/rune.
- nyanpasu64 6y ago
  > Vectorized icons on the other hand take up much less memory and can auto-scale to different displays and use-cases. In the absence of grid-fitting and hinting, monochrome vector icons are just as mediocre at scaling to arbitrary sizes as colored vector icons. However, I think one "advantage" is that fuzzy monochrome borders look less bad than fuzzy outlined borders. TTF bytecode supports grid-fitting and hinting (I believe SVG doesn't support it), and it would be interesting to see that applied to rescalable icons. However, you'd have to turn off subpixel antialiasing.
pcurve 6y ago
I think Mac's old System 7 was the gold standard for effective icon design. https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/settings/menu/macos70.png https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/settings/menu/macos70.... Even after it grew in numbers, I never had difficulty finding things just based on visual alone. https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/classic-mac-os-1994-system-7-5-control-panel-png.928477/ https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/classic-mac-os-1994...
- vizzier 6y ago
  Why do some have horizontal bars, and some vertical? And if it is meaningless, why is it part of the icon?
  - soylentgraham 6y ago
    Doesnt it indicate configurability? And then vert or horz to fit with the icon. Would love to know the real answer though
  - Mikhail_Edoshin 6y ago
    It indicates that this is a control panel. The orientation is yes, random. The rest of the icon personalizes it. It was same for other file types: the general shape plus some personalization. Documents were taller rectangles resembling a sheet of paper with a folder corner, templates were like two sheets on top of each other, programs were squares rotated to 45 degrees, often with a hand, folders were wider rectangles with a tab, clippings were wider rectangles with a serrated edge.
- thiht 6y ago
  I'd say that's nostalgia talking. These are awful. Also don't underestimate your visual memory, most of these don't mean anything to me compared to the "bad" icons of today.
pseudosavant 6y ago
I've used these icons quite a bit. If you use the SVGs they are made in such a way that you can color them quite a bit just using CSS. I haven't used any of them in the default colors.
prox 6y ago
At least for creative programs it is better not to have any color, as this might alter color perception on your current work. But for other type of apps this might not that big of an issue.
fogihujy 6y ago
Don't worry. This is pretty much 80's retro-style monochrome icons that have been modernized. In 5-10 years, we'll be stuck with whatever the re-invention of 90's multi-media UI's (Kai's Power Goo etc) will result in, and we'll be looking back at this and laugh.

noir_lord 6y ago

At least in gimp and Inkscape you can restore the old colourful icons.

dragonwriter 6y ago

I think the current trend is for generic icon sets to be monochromatic or two-tone with the idea that the system applying them will apply one or two color(s) to them based on the semantics of their use and immediate context in the app plus the apps theming, rather than that they will be presented in end products without color.

qz2 6y ago

This whole thing isn't going to blow over until we have science fiction movie special effects foldable transparent displays with completely useless user interfaces that were designed by someone who doesn't have to use them daily but is suitably impressed by them anyway. (Think The Expanse) It was all down hill after windows 2000. Every visual cue in user interfaces such as depth, separation, colour, accelerator underlining and consistency is gone. I feel like I'm stroking a hairless, cold and thoroughly deceased cat most of the time. I suspect, much like most aspects of the human race, that the improvement will only come after a shitty UI causes an actual body count via some ambiguity. The post-mortem for those poor souls will be a couple of paragraphs in comp.risks digest.

roywiggins 6y ago
> A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program. http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1329 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1329
- qz2 6y ago
  That's brilliant. I completely missed that in the numerous times I've read the book!
- daxelrod 6y ago
  Another relevant Adams quip about modern interfaces from Restaurant at the End of The Universe: > “It’s the wild colour scheme that freaks me,” said Zaphod whose love affair with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight, “Every time you try to operate on of these weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?”
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
I'd lay the blame on Kai's power tools and their silly opaque discoverable interfaces. That's the start point of usability taking a back seat to designer bs.

brundolf 6y ago

Part of it may be technical. High-res, colored PNG icons a) are heavyweight, b) require you to ship multiple sizes, c) if you don't have a large enough version for a new display resolution it'll look blurry. This adds both process complexity and implementation complexity. Vectorized icons on the other hand take up much less memory and can auto-scale to different displays and use-cases. If you take it a step further and ship them as a font - which is the gold-standard these days - they can be stored even more compactly and worked with very easily on the web and otherwise, and can even be re-colored dynamically. But of course a font can only be rendered in one color at a time.

mawise 6y ago
Vector graphics can have colors...
- brundolf 6y ago
  Yes but they still tend towards simpler shapes, and fonts can't have multiple colors
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    Fonts on Windows can have multiple colors [0], but it's not something you can currently expect to rely on cross-platform. [0] Fun fact: unlike other OSes, Windows emoji actually are implemented entirely in the font system as multi-color OpenType fonts. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2017/06/06/using-color-fonts-beautiful-text-icons/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2017/06/06/using-...
  - naikrovek 6y ago
    Fonts can indeed have multiple colors per character/glyph/codepoint/rune.
nyanpasu64 6y ago
> Vectorized icons on the other hand take up much less memory and can auto-scale to different displays and use-cases. In the absence of grid-fitting and hinting, monochrome vector icons are just as mediocre at scaling to arbitrary sizes as colored vector icons. However, I think one "advantage" is that fuzzy monochrome borders look less bad than fuzzy outlined borders. TTF bytecode supports grid-fitting and hinting (I believe SVG doesn't support it), and it would be interesting to see that applied to rescalable icons. However, you'd have to turn off subpixel antialiasing.

pcurve 6y ago

I think Mac's old System 7 was the gold standard for effective icon design. https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/settings/menu/macos70.png https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/settings/menu/macos70.... Even after it grew in numbers, I never had difficulty finding things just based on visual alone. https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/classic-mac-os-1994-system-7-5-control-panel-png.928477/ https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/classic-mac-os-1994...

vizzier 6y ago
Why do some have horizontal bars, and some vertical? And if it is meaningless, why is it part of the icon?
- soylentgraham 6y ago
  Doesnt it indicate configurability? And then vert or horz to fit with the icon. Would love to know the real answer though
- Mikhail_Edoshin 6y ago
  It indicates that this is a control panel. The orientation is yes, random. The rest of the icon personalizes it. It was same for other file types: the general shape plus some personalization. Documents were taller rectangles resembling a sheet of paper with a folder corner, templates were like two sheets on top of each other, programs were squares rotated to 45 degrees, often with a hand, folders were wider rectangles with a tab, clippings were wider rectangles with a serrated edge.
thiht 6y ago
I'd say that's nostalgia talking. These are awful. Also don't underestimate your visual memory, most of these don't mean anything to me compared to the "bad" icons of today.

pseudosavant 6y ago

I've used these icons quite a bit. If you use the SVGs they are made in such a way that you can color them quite a bit just using CSS. I haven't used any of them in the default colors.

prox 6y ago

At least for creative programs it is better not to have any color, as this might alter color perception on your current work. But for other type of apps this might not that big of an issue.

fogihujy 6y ago

Don't worry. This is pretty much 80's retro-style monochrome icons that have been modernized. In 5-10 years, we'll be stuck with whatever the re-invention of 90's multi-media UI's (Kai's Power Goo etc) will result in, and we'll be looking back at this and laugh.