8 ms·

Inspecting Yosemite's Icons

238 points by e1ven 12y ago

moe 12y ago
I like the old icons better. The new ones just look washed out to me. And everything to the right of the Gamecenter icon (seriously, wtf happened to the gamecenter icon?) looks like someone ran out of deadline...
cheepin 12y ago
I thought this would be about Half Dome or El Cap.
anoxic 12y ago
I didn't like the new iOS7 icons and I categorically dismissed the Yosemite icons as well. In light of this article, I realize, these icons /make sense/. More than that, it forced me to actually look closely at them. And I also realized that I don't like the icons in Mavericks either, I was just used to it already. The consistency and pattern behind the new icons is well thought out, and the use of subtle lighting effects (the blue and orange undertones) is great art direction and seems to pull things together in a great way. What I don't like is the bright colors and the undertone of a "default" feeling -- like how many of the icons feel like generic dingbats. But this also seems consistent with Apple's use of Helvetica, which gives me the same feeling. Which is somewhere between totally not noticing it's there, and feeling like it's an evil faceless government/corporation. Made me think.
- PeterGriffin 12y ago
  I think Yosemite strikes an amazing balance between simplicity/flatness and complexity/depth. I am hoping this is the consensus inside Apple where design should go for iOS as well, because I still can't stand the iOS 7/8 icons (and the lack of button shapes around buttons). iOS 7 looks ugly and rushed and it was rushed. Maybe Yosemite represents what iOS could've looked like if they had more time (time to design, and time to reflect on the mess iOS 7 is).
- B0jan 12y ago
  Agree.
- Rygu 12y ago
  I do hope that third party applications start experimenting with their icons on Yosemite. I mean not necessarily make their icons identically flat and tilted, but those subtle color reflections are looking very nice.
  - sdrothrock 12y ago
    I hope that they go for consistency instead of breaking the mold for the sake of breaking the mold and standing out -- the last thing I want is a dock full of randomly weird icons.
    - PeterGriffin 12y ago
      Your worries are completely unwarranted. Apple's direction for OSX is a trend setter. Due to sheer exposure, whatever Apple makes, becomes fashionable and most developers try to imitate it (usually that's good, sometimes it's bad). Case in point, while iOS 7 icons weren't something to call home about, many developers quickly redid their app icons as flat white shapes sitting on top of eye-gouging gradients.
      - Yetanfou 12y ago
        Uhhh... not to throw mud on your cake, but Apple has been following a trend with iOS for a while now and tend to merge more and more of it into OSX, hence these developments. When Apple was still lingering in a skeuomorphic pseudo-3D la-la-land, the world made a few turns and turned out to be flat after all. Whether it was Google following Microsoft or the other way around, both presented a 'fresh new look' which was mostly marked by flatness and abstraction. Apple followed suit in iOS7/8 and now in OSX 10.10.
        PeterGriffin 12y ago
        Are you even replying to the right post? I'm talking about the relationship between Apple and devs making apps for their platforms. Not about "who invented flat first" (answer: the 70s did, but that's another story). Picking "who dun it first" arguments online is so old, dude. So old.
- rschmitty 12y ago
  > The consistency and pattern behind the new icons is well thought out, and the use of subtle lighting effects (the blue and orange undertones) is great art direction Made me think they copied the current "hot" of colors, just like going flat after everyone else http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-posters/ http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-poster... It's not that I super dislike it, more than I always thought of apple as a leader instead of follower when it came to design and perhaps I didn't realize how much they lost talent wise. The only thing I truly don't like is notepad lost its full on yellow 'notepad paper' look. The difference between notepad and pages was very obvious prior, now it is subtle
  - arrrg 12y ago
    Notepads are pretty much only yellow in the US. I see that mostly as an internationalisation issue, to be honest. (That said, “folders” also don’t necessarily look that way on many places on Earth besides the US.)
- arrrg 12y ago
  I love the iOS7 symbols and I really don’t understand why others don’t. No one could ever explain that to me, except to say they dislike them. I love the colors, I love the shapes†. Be that as it may, it just seems that tastes diverge and that this is a subjective, not an objective question. I love ’em very much and I think they are much better than the old ones. I’m ok with the more complex OS X symbols, they seem to fit the platform better. I think that’s also thematically a nice contrast between the platforms: OS X is more complex but also more powerful, iOS is a lot simpler – however, both are still consistent with each other where it makes sense. I think that’s also a very nice message to send through graphic design (and one reinforced through Apple’s other announcements about the future of their platforms). — † Of course there are exceptions. Game Center was a train wreck before and still is one – but at least it isn’t offensive to people who play games anymore. (Gaming is not gambling! Oh shit, I just though of IAPs … maybe Apple is more perceptive than I give them credit for …) Does no one at Apple play games or understand people who do? I really dislike the camera symbol. It’s horrific. I liked the lens much more before and I think a stylized lens would be much cooler.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
DAddYE 12y ago
Amazing work! I'm not a designer but I can still appreciate the importance of details. However there are things that I can't explain, all icons are colorful, except launchpad and system preference. They seems to me totally out of the entire system style. I read the "trick" about white ball and chrome/reflective one, however they still look "aliens" in my dock, like a shareware cheap app. Also this metallic icon is used for iCloud and again I don't get the connection on why Apple pickup "metallic" for something and why "color" for another.
wowsig 12y ago
The dissection is just perfect. Although the tilted rectangle still doesn't make so much sense within the grid. The grid with the tilted one looks to me an afterthought imposition. Although the idea that third party apps could use more of the tilted grid seems good as it would created a visual difference that is easy to note.
aljungberg 12y ago
It's easy to make consistent icons as long as you don't mind them being ugly. What's hard is striking a balance. Apple used to have this balance: reasonable consistency yet beautiful icons with a touch of delight and sense of workmanship. If we go from what we had to rulers and paint by numbers we might as well forego design altogether and just write a computer program to generate all icons.
- zimbatm 12y ago
  Or show a shrinked-down screenshot of the application. At least there would be a correlation between the application and it's icon. Responsive design all the way to the icon.
yunong 12y ago
I don't know apple, could you maybe stop spending all your time on the aesthetics of your OS and actually fix some real problems? How about the fact that SMB doesn't work [1], or that you've broken large parts of Dtrace? How about not panicking when someone plugs in an external monitor, or providing symbols for core dumps [2]? This is the reason no one uses Mac OS X for anything serious. [1] http://blogs.computerworld.com/mac-os-x/23872/essential-os-x-mavericks-problem-solving-guide http://blogs.computerworld.com/mac-os-x/23872/essential-os-x... [2] http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-05-23/osx-10.9.3-is-toxic.html http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-05-23/osx-10.9.3-is-to...
- dimillian 12y ago
  I use it all the day, everyday, and I'm doing serious things on it. I can't see how using Linux or Windows will help me better. But you're right, OS X is a consumer focused OS with a strong emphasis on look & feel. For the better, or for the worse. At the moment, and during my 6 years using it, I only saw the better.
- nwh 12y ago
  I'd just love them to fix iMessage so that it works in something approaching a sane way. Messages "don't send" but appear on other devices, messages that are "delivered" never left my device, you still can't search your messages without a third party tool, attachments are deleted on file but not on disk..
- MrScruff 12y ago
  I highly doubt the engineers responsible for Dtrace are designing icons.
  - lotyrin 12y ago
    No, but there's still a decision made at some level in the organization which affects the sizes and budgets of the respective teams.
    - snowwrestler 12y ago
bithush 12y ago
I am not an icon or graphics expert but in my layman's opinion Apple always have such beautiful icons. One of my little hates about Windows is how Microsoft are lazy at things such as icons. We have a mixture of new and old icons all through the system and it makes things look ugly. Shame really as it really cannot be that difficult to spend some time making things look consistent and nice. Oh well maybe in Windows 9 ;)
jokoon 12y ago
indeed, better looking cars sell much better me, being poor, if I could use xfce on mac, I would. I use icons only if it's more compact than text. I love small icons. Nice to see apple take the minimalist road.
cocoflunchy 12y ago
On the subject of Yosemite's design, can someone explain to me what this big cog icon is doing in the middle of the Finder's buttons? (http://imgur.com/0RWEzG1 http://imgur.com/0RWEzG1) Clicking on it has no effect and it seems like it's a repeat of the button on the left... it's really weird.
- hamstergene 12y ago
  Must be an unfinished or deleted button. The image is standard `NSAdvanced` system image, which is usually first in the drop-down lists in Xcode. When a developer does not have final graphics and needs to pick just anything they often click the first one in the list, this one.
  - demallien 12y ago
    It's not a button, and isn't supposed to be one. It even has a shadow underneath it - I'm hoping it's just a way of quickly being able to identify that a Mac is running a beta of Mac OS X, and that it will go away with the official release.
- aaronbrethorst 12y ago
  Go into toolbar customization mode, and drag it out to get rid of it.
- notduncansmith 12y ago
  I'm running Yosemite and I don't see that, you might want to try updating to the latest version.
- trvrprkr 12y ago
  That's likely the Dropbox Finder item. This is where it appears by default when installing Dropbox. I'd guess that Dropbox Finder assets aren't completely compatible with Yosemite yet.
- batuhanicoz 12y ago
  This only seems to happen when you install Yosemite by upgrading from the previous OS X. It's not there on a clean install. I may be wrong though. When I first installed Yosemite by upgrading, this icon was there. This morning I did a clean install and it's not there. Maybe it's an update that fixed this? I don't know.
ricardobeat 12y ago
Note that he wisely completely ignored the new (iOS7) Game Center icon, which doesn't conform to any guidelines past or present, and only kind of works with a white background. Let's hope that eyesore goes away before the final release.
- jayvanguard 12y ago
  Game Center has always been kind of weird. Is it done in a location other than Cupertino perhaps?
dirkgently 12y ago
When the most discussed aspects of an OS on a technical forum like HN are the icons and UI, it's time to take my coat and leave.
- chockablock 12y ago
  Consider just sitting out the thread if the topic doesn't interest you.
totoroisalive 12y ago
Not being a designer, I usually just like the way something looks or how bad it looks, but somehow this article feels like when you are analyzing a piece of code or when doing a teardown on a piece of hardware to know how it works. The effort to make something looks great , not for everyone for obvious and subjectives reasons, is beyond the wow and meh attitude, so many pieces must found their way to look good or plain bad. The whole idea of making a seamless transition from your phone to your tablet and to your computer and back again is amazing.
TD-Linux 12y ago
Just a nitpick, the effect of light bleeding from one diffuse surface to another is achieved in rendering with global illumination. Ambient occlusion is an approximation of GI and cannot simulate this sort of color bleed.
- ykl 12y ago
  Sure you can, just tint your AO pass before comp.
verisimilitude 12y ago
I use a vertical dock on OS X; I wonder if this lighting still makes sense or looks "right" when icons are stacked up in a vertical dock?
grumblestumble 12y ago
There's a somewhat throwaway line in there - "It’s as though Apple used the Yosemite wallpaper as the environment map for the new icons." - that made me think how it would be possible to find the highlight/shadow hue for any given wallpaper and apply it to the icon set. I imagine it would be technically easy to accomplish with vector graphics.
- Synaesthesia 12y ago
  You could do it to raster graphics too with a gradient map, replace a greyscale gradient with a subtly colorised one. This would possible require a separate layer channel on the icon for the regions to be mapped.
pocketstar 12y ago
they changed the finder icon! OUTRAGE!!!!

238 points by e1ven 12y ago

moe 12y ago

I like the old icons better. The new ones just look washed out to me. And everything to the right of the Gamecenter icon (seriously, wtf happened to the gamecenter icon?) looks like someone ran out of deadline...

cheepin 12y ago

I thought this would be about Half Dome or El Cap.

anoxic 12y ago

I didn't like the new iOS7 icons and I categorically dismissed the Yosemite icons as well. In light of this article, I realize, these icons /make sense/. More than that, it forced me to actually look closely at them. And I also realized that I don't like the icons in Mavericks either, I was just used to it already. The consistency and pattern behind the new icons is well thought out, and the use of subtle lighting effects (the blue and orange undertones) is great art direction and seems to pull things together in a great way. What I don't like is the bright colors and the undertone of a "default" feeling -- like how many of the icons feel like generic dingbats. But this also seems consistent with Apple's use of Helvetica, which gives me the same feeling. Which is somewhere between totally not noticing it's there, and feeling like it's an evil faceless government/corporation. Made me think.

PeterGriffin 12y ago
I think Yosemite strikes an amazing balance between simplicity/flatness and complexity/depth. I am hoping this is the consensus inside Apple where design should go for iOS as well, because I still can't stand the iOS 7/8 icons (and the lack of button shapes around buttons). iOS 7 looks ugly and rushed and it was rushed. Maybe Yosemite represents what iOS could've looked like if they had more time (time to design, and time to reflect on the mess iOS 7 is).
B0jan 12y ago
Agree.
Rygu 12y ago
I do hope that third party applications start experimenting with their icons on Yosemite. I mean not necessarily make their icons identically flat and tilted, but those subtle color reflections are looking very nice.
- sdrothrock 12y ago
  I hope that they go for consistency instead of breaking the mold for the sake of breaking the mold and standing out -- the last thing I want is a dock full of randomly weird icons.
  - PeterGriffin 12y ago
    Your worries are completely unwarranted. Apple's direction for OSX is a trend setter. Due to sheer exposure, whatever Apple makes, becomes fashionable and most developers try to imitate it (usually that's good, sometimes it's bad). Case in point, while iOS 7 icons weren't something to call home about, many developers quickly redid their app icons as flat white shapes sitting on top of eye-gouging gradients.
    - Yetanfou 12y ago
      Uhhh... not to throw mud on your cake, but Apple has been following a trend with iOS for a while now and tend to merge more and more of it into OSX, hence these developments. When Apple was still lingering in a skeuomorphic pseudo-3D la-la-land, the world made a few turns and turned out to be flat after all. Whether it was Google following Microsoft or the other way around, both presented a 'fresh new look' which was mostly marked by flatness and abstraction. Apple followed suit in iOS7/8 and now in OSX 10.10.
      - PeterGriffin 12y ago
        Are you even replying to the right post? I'm talking about the relationship between Apple and devs making apps for their platforms. Not about "who invented flat first" (answer: the 70s did, but that's another story). Picking "who dun it first" arguments online is so old, dude. So old.
rschmitty 12y ago
> The consistency and pattern behind the new icons is well thought out, and the use of subtle lighting effects (the blue and orange undertones) is great art direction Made me think they copied the current "hot" of colors, just like going flat after everyone else http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-posters/ http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-poster... It's not that I super dislike it, more than I always thought of apple as a leader instead of follower when it came to design and perhaps I didn't realize how much they lost talent wise. The only thing I truly don't like is notepad lost its full on yellow 'notepad paper' look. The difference between notepad and pages was very obvious prior, now it is subtle
- arrrg 12y ago
  Notepads are pretty much only yellow in the US. I see that mostly as an internationalisation issue, to be honest. (That said, “folders” also don’t necessarily look that way on many places on Earth besides the US.)
arrrg 12y ago
I love the iOS7 symbols and I really don’t understand why others don’t. No one could ever explain that to me, except to say they dislike them. I love the colors, I love the shapes†. Be that as it may, it just seems that tastes diverge and that this is a subjective, not an objective question. I love ’em very much and I think they are much better than the old ones. I’m ok with the more complex OS X symbols, they seem to fit the platform better. I think that’s also thematically a nice contrast between the platforms: OS X is more complex but also more powerful, iOS is a lot simpler – however, both are still consistent with each other where it makes sense. I think that’s also a very nice message to send through graphic design (and one reinforced through Apple’s other announcements about the future of their platforms). — † Of course there are exceptions. Game Center was a train wreck before and still is one – but at least it isn’t offensive to people who play games anymore. (Gaming is not gambling! Oh shit, I just though of IAPs … maybe Apple is more perceptive than I give them credit for …) Does no one at Apple play games or understand people who do? I really dislike the camera symbol. It’s horrific. I liked the lens much more before and I think a stylized lens would be much cooler.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

DAddYE 12y ago

Amazing work! I'm not a designer but I can still appreciate the importance of details. However there are things that I can't explain, all icons are colorful, except launchpad and system preference. They seems to me totally out of the entire system style. I read the "trick" about white ball and chrome/reflective one, however they still look "aliens" in my dock, like a shareware cheap app. Also this metallic icon is used for iCloud and again I don't get the connection on why Apple pickup "metallic" for something and why "color" for another.

wowsig 12y ago

The dissection is just perfect. Although the tilted rectangle still doesn't make so much sense within the grid. The grid with the tilted one looks to me an afterthought imposition. Although the idea that third party apps could use more of the tilted grid seems good as it would created a visual difference that is easy to note.

aljungberg 12y ago

It's easy to make consistent icons as long as you don't mind them being ugly. What's hard is striking a balance. Apple used to have this balance: reasonable consistency yet beautiful icons with a touch of delight and sense of workmanship. If we go from what we had to rulers and paint by numbers we might as well forego design altogether and just write a computer program to generate all icons.

zimbatm 12y ago
Or show a shrinked-down screenshot of the application. At least there would be a correlation between the application and it's icon. Responsive design all the way to the icon.

yunong 12y ago

I don't know apple, could you maybe stop spending all your time on the aesthetics of your OS and actually fix some real problems? How about the fact that SMB doesn't work [1], or that you've broken large parts of Dtrace? How about not panicking when someone plugs in an external monitor, or providing symbols for core dumps [2]? This is the reason no one uses Mac OS X for anything serious. [1] http://blogs.computerworld.com/mac-os-x/23872/essential-os-x-mavericks-problem-solving-guide http://blogs.computerworld.com/mac-os-x/23872/essential-os-x... [2] http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-05-23/osx-10.9.3-is-toxic.html http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-05-23/osx-10.9.3-is-to...

dimillian 12y ago
I use it all the day, everyday, and I'm doing serious things on it. I can't see how using Linux or Windows will help me better. But you're right, OS X is a consumer focused OS with a strong emphasis on look & feel. For the better, or for the worse. At the moment, and during my 6 years using it, I only saw the better.
nwh 12y ago
I'd just love them to fix iMessage so that it works in something approaching a sane way. Messages "don't send" but appear on other devices, messages that are "delivered" never left my device, you still can't search your messages without a third party tool, attachments are deleted on file but not on disk..
MrScruff 12y ago
I highly doubt the engineers responsible for Dtrace are designing icons.
- lotyrin 12y ago
  No, but there's still a decision made at some level in the organization which affects the sizes and budgets of the respective teams.
  - snowwrestler 12y ago

bithush 12y ago

I am not an icon or graphics expert but in my layman's opinion Apple always have such beautiful icons. One of my little hates about Windows is how Microsoft are lazy at things such as icons. We have a mixture of new and old icons all through the system and it makes things look ugly. Shame really as it really cannot be that difficult to spend some time making things look consistent and nice. Oh well maybe in Windows 9 ;)

jokoon 12y ago

indeed, better looking cars sell much better me, being poor, if I could use xfce on mac, I would. I use icons only if it's more compact than text. I love small icons. Nice to see apple take the minimalist road.

cocoflunchy 12y ago

On the subject of Yosemite's design, can someone explain to me what this big cog icon is doing in the middle of the Finder's buttons? (http://imgur.com/0RWEzG1 http://imgur.com/0RWEzG1) Clicking on it has no effect and it seems like it's a repeat of the button on the left... it's really weird.

hamstergene 12y ago
Must be an unfinished or deleted button. The image is standard `NSAdvanced` system image, which is usually first in the drop-down lists in Xcode. When a developer does not have final graphics and needs to pick just anything they often click the first one in the list, this one.
- demallien 12y ago
  It's not a button, and isn't supposed to be one. It even has a shadow underneath it - I'm hoping it's just a way of quickly being able to identify that a Mac is running a beta of Mac OS X, and that it will go away with the official release.
aaronbrethorst 12y ago
Go into toolbar customization mode, and drag it out to get rid of it.
notduncansmith 12y ago
I'm running Yosemite and I don't see that, you might want to try updating to the latest version.
trvrprkr 12y ago
That's likely the Dropbox Finder item. This is where it appears by default when installing Dropbox. I'd guess that Dropbox Finder assets aren't completely compatible with Yosemite yet.
batuhanicoz 12y ago
This only seems to happen when you install Yosemite by upgrading from the previous OS X. It's not there on a clean install. I may be wrong though. When I first installed Yosemite by upgrading, this icon was there. This morning I did a clean install and it's not there. Maybe it's an update that fixed this? I don't know.

ricardobeat 12y ago

Note that he wisely completely ignored the new (iOS7) Game Center icon, which doesn't conform to any guidelines past or present, and only kind of works with a white background. Let's hope that eyesore goes away before the final release.

jayvanguard 12y ago
Game Center has always been kind of weird. Is it done in a location other than Cupertino perhaps?

dirkgently 12y ago

When the most discussed aspects of an OS on a technical forum like HN are the icons and UI, it's time to take my coat and leave.

chockablock 12y ago
Consider just sitting out the thread if the topic doesn't interest you.

totoroisalive 12y ago

Not being a designer, I usually just like the way something looks or how bad it looks, but somehow this article feels like when you are analyzing a piece of code or when doing a teardown on a piece of hardware to know how it works. The effort to make something looks great , not for everyone for obvious and subjectives reasons, is beyond the wow and meh attitude, so many pieces must found their way to look good or plain bad. The whole idea of making a seamless transition from your phone to your tablet and to your computer and back again is amazing.

TD-Linux 12y ago

Just a nitpick, the effect of light bleeding from one diffuse surface to another is achieved in rendering with global illumination. Ambient occlusion is an approximation of GI and cannot simulate this sort of color bleed.

ykl 12y ago
Sure you can, just tint your AO pass before comp.

verisimilitude 12y ago

I use a vertical dock on OS X; I wonder if this lighting still makes sense or looks "right" when icons are stacked up in a vertical dock?

grumblestumble 12y ago

There's a somewhat throwaway line in there - "It’s as though Apple used the Yosemite wallpaper as the environment map for the new icons." - that made me think how it would be possible to find the highlight/shadow hue for any given wallpaper and apply it to the icon set. I imagine it would be technically easy to accomplish with vector graphics.

Synaesthesia 12y ago
You could do it to raster graphics too with a gradient map, replace a greyscale gradient with a subtly colorised one. This would possible require a separate layer channel on the icon for the regions to be mapped.

pocketstar 12y ago

they changed the finder icon! OUTRAGE!!!!