
There Is Only One Cloud Icon (2011) - li4ick
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEntireUniverse.aspx
======
gumby
I have long been amused by this — and it shows the dominance of marketing.

> Of course, there's only so many ways to draw a cloud, right?

Well into the early ‘00s I would draw the ‘cloud’ (typically on a white board)
the way it appeared in the early TCP papers (the origin of the term): a more
vaguely symmetrical or “round” shape, not something with a sharp straight
bottom. A “dust cloud”, if you will, that obscured its inner workings.

But of course once they heard engineers use that words, marketers
misunderstood the metaphor, drew a cumulus cloud, and ran with it. And now we
have a metaphor that doesn’t actually mean anything. As usual.

~~~
afarrell
> a metaphor that doesn’t actually mean anything. As usual.

It is no longer a metaphor. Like the save icon, It is an idiom or symbol: a
metaphor that has kicked the bucket. You can argue[1] that we shouldn't use
idioms if we've forgotten what they originally refer to. In the case of "kick
the bucket", you'd be right. It would be clearer and more accessible to just
say "died". Few people have the sort of visceral memory of an animal being
tied up in a bucket[2] and thrashing around that gives the phrase its extra
punch. In the case of the save icon, we have no real widely-understood
alternative. In the case of the cloud, the same is true. The danger is
reinforcing a sense of understanding where there is none--but I'm not sure
there is a misunderstanding here.

[1]
[http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...](http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/)

[2] a type of butchers frame

~~~
mos_basik
I assumed (forgive the macabre topic) that "kicking the bucket" referred to
the action of kicking over the bucket you are standing on in order to hang
yourself.

I wonder if Mr. Safire has written about this.

------
michaelt
The common feature to the cloud icons elsewhere in the article is "Two bumps
on top, one large and one small" \- whereas in the BBC weather screen capture,
the clouds have a single bump on top.

Of course, it's normal for icons to look similar - they're trying to symbolise
the same thing - same as different fonts are trying to depict the same
letters.

------
sanxiyn
See also: The one, the only, photograph of Earth (2001).
[https://neil.fraser.name/writing/earth/](https://neil.fraser.name/writing/earth/)

~~~
amelius
Different clouds though, in that picture.

------
mike_hock
There is only one cloud icon in the entire universe that keeps going back and
forth in time. As it is going backwards in time, it appears to us as an anti
cloud icon.

------
dsego
Clouds on the Noun Project
[https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=cloud](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=cloud)

------
GuiA
I work as a designer, and this golden ratio thing is hilarious. The only
designers who consciously use the golden ratio are junior designers eager to
find some deep, mystic design rule that will guarantee all their designs to be
beautiful.

Everything looks like the golden ratio if you squint hard enough.

[https://www.fastcodesign.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-
design...](https://www.fastcodesign.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-designs-
biggest-myth)

------
c_shu
The same goes for many other icons. Like rss, wifi, and shutdown icon.

It makes sense, because once an icon becomes popular reinventing it with
another design makes people confused.

~~~
fbnlsr
Isn't it different because the RSS, Wi-Fi and Shutdown icon have been designed
to represent a protocol and/or system?

The iCloud "cloud" icon was designed to represent a product, which implies
other products could/should have found something else.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Apple didn't invent the cloud.

Apple's iCloud icon is a cloud icon. Apple's branding strategy is to hijack
and monopolize common words like "apple", a warbof conquest against the
English language

------
amelius
Apple's cloud icon has rounded corners.

------
E-M
Article from 2011, but nothing has changed afaik...

------
gregoriol
You have to check The Simpsons, I bet they did it first

