What's really interesting is that a lot of these rudiments (save, open, copy, paste, print) simply do not require icons in modern software. I can't remember th

What's really interesting is that a lot of these rudiments (save, open, copy, paste, print) simply do not require icons in modern software. I can't remember the last time I saw a save icon in any of the software I use. Not because saving has gone away, but because it's so fundamental to document-based applications that it doesn't need a dedicated button to call it out, and having one just wastes space. Saving isn't special functionality requiring an icon - you either use File>Save, or Cmd/Ctrl-S, or even just close the document and follow the prompt to save. Copy, paste, open, these things don't need to take up valuable interface space as if they're some novelty functionality that uses must carefully be introduced to. We don't need a new save icon, because we don't need a save icon at all.