Just Because You Can
Comments: 3
…doesn’t mean you should.
Speaking of icons, most of the OS X icons I’ve seen remind me of a line from Goethe (I think): Restriction shows the master’s hand.
Something’s getting lost in the move from 32*32px icons to 128*128. It’s almost like there’s too much space, or that too great a level of detail or realism is possible. In the hands of a skilled designer amazing things can be done with the 1024 pixels available in the smaller icon. Too many OS X icons look like the artwork’s been copied straight over from Illustrator (which is not necessarily bad, of course, if you’re a good illustrator).
Call me old-fashioned, but icons are good when they’re iconic. Pixelated never hurts, either. I like that hand-made feeling.
•••
Posted to Computers • 2002.04.03 (Wed) • 23:22
Comments
Posted by James 2002.04.04, 05:29
I second the emotion. I think the blocky look introduced the perfect amount of contrast at such small size.
Desiging icons old style always felt like Haiku to me. Elements reduced to thier most basic building blocks.
Does this make us old school?
Posted by jh 2002.04.09, 11:50
Proudly old school, I’d say. ;-)
Posted by Darrel 2002.04.11, 01:24
There is a bigger issue as well with general usability.
The idea behind a well-crafted icon is that it is easy to interpret. Many of the ‘icons’ in OSX aren’t really icons…they’re complex illustrations/photos. It’s much more mentally intensive to interpret this type of information on a computer screen than simple icons.
Icons, due to their simplicity, also allow for easy differentation (macromedia products are circles, adobe products are square, Microsoft products are initials, etc…) The new OSX images, due to there complexity, tend to blend together in terms of fine detail.
Post a comment:
Send This Story to an Enemy
• • •
