> Intuitive graphical icons were replaced with stylish, monotone shit that looks like a graphic design student's dream, but conveyed less instant information.

> Intuitive graphical icons were replaced with stylish, monotone shit that looks like a graphic design student's dream, but conveyed less instant information. Design is the art of signal-to-noise ratio, or in simpler terms, balance and harmony. If you over-use any modality, lines, text, color, nesting, you increase the noise level. If you underutilize a modality (for instance your whole UI is monochrome), you reduce your signal bandwidth. Every trend gets mindless followers, who throw the baby out with the bath water without even realizing it. But trends also bring a grain of gold to the table. For instance, monotone icons allow many more elements in the same screen real estate than text, and by not using color you can have a larger color budget for other elements, which you can use elsewhere to convey progress, status, or anything else important. A good use of monotone icons are text formatting (bold, justify, etc) and display options (column view, tree view, etc), or toolbars (like in photoshop or 3D tools). Many apps from the 2010 era overused colored icons, and I’m glad those went away. Some FOSS apps still suffer from that.