5 ms·

Google Material Design Icons

105 points by jonaslejon 12y ago

imaginenore 12y ago
Not very good looking icons.
- krakowman 12y ago
  I actually thinks it looks good
oneeyedpigeon 12y ago
A preview of the set is here: http://google.github.io/material-design-icons/ http://google.github.io/material-design-icons/
- peterjs 12y ago
  Are all these icons black-and-white? It seems to be fashionable to use monochrome colors for icons these days (Gmail, many mobile and desktop apps). It makes for a sleek and calm interface. I think its choosing the easy way out. Instead of picking a good pallet and shapes, just remove the colors and all of a sudden a seemingly unrelated set of graphics has something very distinctive in common (it worked particularly well for me in a small newspaper where low quality photos were contributed by different authors, just make them grayscale, voila). Really, color is such a great way to convey information.
  - JohnTHaller 12y ago
    These are for use in menus, submenus, notification areas, toolbars and the like. Locations where you'll be presented with a few choices that are easily distinguishable. They're not designed to be app icons. They're designed not to distract away from the rest of the app, especially the content.
  - yourad_io 12y ago
    I think it would be trivial to do this modification, seeing as the icons are provided in SVG format (alongside the more static PNG)
KhalilK 12y ago
Previously featured here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8472164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8472164
13 12y ago
I'm not really sure about these, they don't have a very definitive flow and don't scale down particularly well.
- yourad_io 12y ago
  Did you read all of it? Scaling to arbitrary device sizes and between input types seems to be a principal consideration here, and my "gut feeling" is it would work. I can see the animation principles (for instance) being applied from a smartwatch, all the way through 4K displays. Since most of the points aren't just "declared good" but come with justification, it would be trivial to try to rebuff them, rather than dismiss them with a general argument. Edit: I'm talking about the spec rather than the actual icons. The icons themselves are scalable as well.
  - 13 12y ago
    Scaling the vector images is technically doable, but having them look good is another matter. Traditionally a lot of low-sized icons are hand massaged, otherwise due to the scaling you inevitably have most of the boundaries sitting across pixels and everything is quite fuzzy. I found with these that when they dropped sub 128px I was struggling to determine what they were attempting to describe without resorting to the captions. I know that this is less and less of a deal with high resolution displays, but it's still worth considering just how easy to parse an icon is at small size.
chj 12y ago
Thank you, Google!
iconfinder 12y ago
Indexed and searchable here: https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/google-material-design-icons https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/google-material-design-i...
sschueller 12y ago
I would like to get these in font format like fontawesome.
JohnTHaller 12y ago
For the curious, these are licensed as CC BY-SA 4.0, which means they need to be attributed and you must share changes. This unfortunately means they are incompatible with the GPL and similar licenses.
Corrado 12y ago
Interestingly, the "SAVE" icon is still a floppy disk[1]. Sure, its stylized a bit, but it is definitely recognizable as a floppy disk from the 80's. How many years have to elapse before that icon is rethought? When was the last time you personally held an actual floppy disk? How would you even fit a floppy disk into a phone (or website)? [1] https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/352084/ic_save_icon#size=128 https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/352084/ic_save_icon#size=12...
- lmz 12y ago
  And it even looks more like a 5.25" floppy instead of the more commonly seen (in icons) 3.5" floppy.
- cmpaul 12y ago
  The handset used for "call" icons should probably be rethought soon too.
- grissom 12y ago
  This doesn't get me nearly as much as the fact that smartphones are called phones, and probably will be for the forseeable future. The save icon may be anachronistic, but a hardware drive is still an accurate representation of what's happening. Today's phones are about as much about phoning as computers are about word processing.
  - judk 12y ago
    What's a hardware drive?
- incision 12y ago
  ">How many years have to elapse before that icon is rethought? When was the last time you personally held an actual floppy disk? How would you even fit a floppy disk into a phone (or website)?" I don't think any of that matters. How many smartphones run on AA batteries [1]? How many people have ever configured anything involving gearing [2]? Rethinking an icon feels like a contradiction. It doesn't matter what it's 'supposed' to be. It's not a floppy disk, it's the save icon. 1: https://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=battery https://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=battery 2: https://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=settings https://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=settings
jdkanani 12y ago
It is always good to see open sourced icons. I have always ignored most important parts of UI/UX. It would be great if somebody can provide some insights about why material design is so important and what is so good about it?

105 points by jonaslejon 12y ago

imaginenore 12y ago

Not very good looking icons.

krakowman 12y ago
I actually thinks it looks good

oneeyedpigeon 12y ago

A preview of the set is here: http://google.github.io/material-design-icons/ http://google.github.io/material-design-icons/

peterjs 12y ago
Are all these icons black-and-white? It seems to be fashionable to use monochrome colors for icons these days (Gmail, many mobile and desktop apps). It makes for a sleek and calm interface. I think its choosing the easy way out. Instead of picking a good pallet and shapes, just remove the colors and all of a sudden a seemingly unrelated set of graphics has something very distinctive in common (it worked particularly well for me in a small newspaper where low quality photos were contributed by different authors, just make them grayscale, voila). Really, color is such a great way to convey information.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  These are for use in menus, submenus, notification areas, toolbars and the like. Locations where you'll be presented with a few choices that are easily distinguishable. They're not designed to be app icons. They're designed not to distract away from the rest of the app, especially the content.
- yourad_io 12y ago
  I think it would be trivial to do this modification, seeing as the icons are provided in SVG format (alongside the more static PNG)

KhalilK 12y ago

Previously featured here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8472164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8472164

13 12y ago

I'm not really sure about these, they don't have a very definitive flow and don't scale down particularly well.

yourad_io 12y ago
Did you read all of it? Scaling to arbitrary device sizes and between input types seems to be a principal consideration here, and my "gut feeling" is it would work. I can see the animation principles (for instance) being applied from a smartwatch, all the way through 4K displays. Since most of the points aren't just "declared good" but come with justification, it would be trivial to try to rebuff them, rather than dismiss them with a general argument. Edit: I'm talking about the spec rather than the actual icons. The icons themselves are scalable as well.
- 13 12y ago
  Scaling the vector images is technically doable, but having them look good is another matter. Traditionally a lot of low-sized icons are hand massaged, otherwise due to the scaling you inevitably have most of the boundaries sitting across pixels and everything is quite fuzzy. I found with these that when they dropped sub 128px I was struggling to determine what they were attempting to describe without resorting to the captions. I know that this is less and less of a deal with high resolution displays, but it's still worth considering just how easy to parse an icon is at small size.

chj 12y ago

Thank you, Google!

iconfinder 12y ago

Indexed and searchable here: https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/google-material-design-icons https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/google-material-design-i...

sschueller 12y ago

I would like to get these in font format like fontawesome.

JohnTHaller 12y ago

For the curious, these are licensed as CC BY-SA 4.0, which means they need to be attributed and you must share changes. This unfortunately means they are incompatible with the GPL and similar licenses.

Corrado 12y ago

Interestingly, the "SAVE" icon is still a floppy disk[1]. Sure, its stylized a bit, but it is definitely recognizable as a floppy disk from the 80's. How many years have to elapse before that icon is rethought? When was the last time you personally held an actual floppy disk? How would you even fit a floppy disk into a phone (or website)? [1] https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/352084/ic_save_icon#size=128 https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/352084/ic_save_icon#size=12...

lmz 12y ago
And it even looks more like a 5.25" floppy instead of the more commonly seen (in icons) 3.5" floppy.
cmpaul 12y ago
The handset used for "call" icons should probably be rethought soon too.
grissom 12y ago
This doesn't get me nearly as much as the fact that smartphones are called phones, and probably will be for the forseeable future. The save icon may be anachronistic, but a hardware drive is still an accurate representation of what's happening. Today's phones are about as much about phoning as computers are about word processing.
- judk 12y ago
  What's a hardware drive?
incision 12y ago
">How many years have to elapse before that icon is rethought? When was the last time you personally held an actual floppy disk? How would you even fit a floppy disk into a phone (or website)?" I don't think any of that matters. How many smartphones run on AA batteries [1]? How many people have ever configured anything involving gearing [2]? Rethinking an icon feels like a contradiction. It doesn't matter what it's 'supposed' to be. It's not a floppy disk, it's the save icon. 1: https://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=battery https://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=battery 2: https://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=settings https://www.iconfinder.com/search/?q=settings

jdkanani 12y ago

It is always good to see open sourced icons. I have always ignored most important parts of UI/UX. It would be great if somebody can provide some insights about why material design is so important and what is so good about it?