
There is only one Cloud Icon in the Entire Universe - shawndumas
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEntireUniverse.aspx
======
tripzilch
As nobody ever checks and bothers to measure these things:

\- the ratio of the bounding rectangle is indeed between about 1.60 and 1.64
depending on how you fudge the pixels. but only for the inner cloud shape,
including the embossed highlights, not for any of the other four possible
measuring points.

\- the ratio of the two small circles might be 76:47 if you again fudge the
pixels just right, but then it's 1.617, so that's really close.

\- the ratio of the two larger circles on the right is way off. 106:71 is a
ratio of 1.49 and that's not going to come anywhere near the golden ratio no
matter how much you fudge it.

Hey if anyone got a much higher resolution version of this icon I could
measure the ratios to within some precision, that might be nice.

Additionally the ratio between the biggest and the smallest circle is almost
exactly 4:9. I bet that's really significant too. Because 9 - 4 = 5, and as
the great Malaclypse the Younger already stated in his magnum opus _Principia
Discordia_ : "All things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples
of five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5. The Law of
Fives is never wrong."

 _Quantum Eris Demonstrantum_

~~~
tripzilch
One more addition, this is where the blogger is mistaken:

    
    
        Funny thing about the Golden Ratio, if you look for it, you'll find it everywhere.
    

He meant to say "five", not the golden ratio. 1.666 = 2/3 and 2+3=5. Because
as Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst said to Malaclypse, "I find the Law of Fives to be
more and more manifest the harder I look."

~~~
william42
Well, the Golden Ratio is one plus the square root of FIVE divided by two.

~~~
Zash
√5×.5+.5

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Samuel_Michon
It puzzles me how the author of this article came to the conclusion that Apple
borrrowed/stole its cloud icon from Pictos.

Apple's MobileMe was announced on June 6, 2008. From the start, it used the
same cloud icon. [1]

According to the Pictos web site (and the Wayback Machine), the Pictos
collection came into being in 2010. [2]

[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20080720090522/http://www.apple.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080720090522/http://www.apple.com/mobileme/)

[2]
[http://wayback.archive.org/web/20100701000000*/http://pictos...](http://wayback.archive.org/web/20100701000000*/http://pictos.drewwilson.com/)

Edit: I thought of one possible explanation. The author, a designer at
Microsoft, explains his reason for writing the article is because people
accused him of copying Apple's cloud icon for use on ASP.net's website. This
made him search for earlier examples than Apple's, to somehow justify using
the same cloud shape that so many lazy designers do now.

~~~
bruceboughton
He's a developer at Microsoft, not a designer. Quite a well known one.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
My bad. From his article, it seemed as if he had something to do with choosing
or making the icon:

 _"we used an icon from the Pictos collection. I have an email from March of
2010 where we selected that icon, in fact."_

 _"we updated the old site's cloud icon"_

 _"the icon isn't from Apple, it's straight from Pictos 1. I know, because we
bought it from them for our site."_

 _"it seems there is only one cloud icon in the universe and it's four circles
with a flat base. I like it."_

Nevertheless, though the author talks about the Pictos 1 icon set being around
for years, he offers no proof for that. The Pictos website was made in 2010,
years after Apple's MobileMe.

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enjalot
☁ unicode cloud <http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2601/index.htm>

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sambeau
Anyone who grew up in the 1970s/1980s UK will know this to be a nonsense:

[http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41148000/jpg/_41148618...](http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41148000/jpg/_41148618_weather_bbc_416.jpg)

~~~
DanBC
Yes. I had thought the flat base was a distinct feature, but I was wrong. It's
been used for years.

([http://hub.tv-
ark.org.uk/images/weather/bbc_images/bbc_weath...](http://hub.tv-
ark.org.uk/images/weather/bbc_images/bbc_weather_1979d.jpg))

Also, a simple Google image search of [cloud logo] gives many different
varieties of cloud. Some have bumpy bases; some have more or less than three
circles; etc.

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jannes
This makes me wonder if this type of cloud icons is going to replace the
floppy disk as a metaphor for saving. It certainly is about time.

~~~
Raphael
I thought they were going to get rid of explicit saving. The current state is
automatically saved, as well as some or all history.

~~~
brown9-2
You seem to be referring to iCloud and OS X Lion's version history, while the
parent is referring to "saving" as an action in all apps in general.

~~~
sophacles
This trend and concept has existed far longer than Apple's latest offering.
(although apple has the best chance of actually driving it to widespread
adoption).

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jamesbritt
_Funny thing about the Golden Ratio, if you look for it, you'll find it
everywhere._

Counter-argument to this:

<http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/pseudo/fibonacc.htm>

tl;dr: It's everywhere only if you cherry-pick what you measure and
occasionally squint.

~~~
william42
To be fair, if you _look_ for it, you'll _find_ it everywhere, because of
confirmation bias.

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gojomo
Even the author's examples of asymmetric, 4-bulge, flat-bottomed cloud icons
vary somewhat, though a good case is made that this is a very popular variant.
At least one of the example App icons has 5 bulges, and the 'old weather map'
example refutes rather than supports the case by being a distinctly different
symmetric 3-bulge cloud.

I think the more interesting topic is why _asymmetric_ , _flat-bottomed_ ,
_4-bulged_ , _3-radiused_ , _golden-aspect-ratio'ed_ is so popular in the icon
format. Pretty sure it's due to the need to look good bounded in a small
square – balanced but not perfectly (unnaturally) so, and simplified to
minimal details but not cartoonish.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Right, and of course most (if not all) of those app icons came after Apple
announced MobileMe.

Apple released the first iPhone SDK beta on March 6, 2008. [1]

Apple announced MobileMe on June 9, 2008. Both MobileMe and the iPhone App
Store launched on the same day, July 11, 2008. [2]

So there was a 3 month period in which some app developer could've
independently come up with a cloud themed app icon identical to the one used
in MobileMe. I doubt that happened, though.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_SDK#SDK_release_history>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobileme#MobileMe>

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DavidSJ
_Hat tip to Ian Griffiths who points out that the BBC Weather Service beat all
of us to the iCloud icon, kind of...over 30 years ago. ;)_

Except that BBC cloud icon looks nothing like the iCloud icon.

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judofyr
See also: "Misconceptions about the Golden Ratio" —
<http://laptops.maine.edu/GoldenRatio.pdf>

~~~
rytis
just one comment on that paper. "the most aesthetically pleasing rectangle"
experiment I think is flawed. when you present someone with 4 figures it is
easier to unconsciously pick the actually "most pleasing" because your brain
is ok with validating all four for "aesthetics coefficient" so to say.

when you're presented with some 48 figures, you simply overload your brain and
it fails to evaluate aesthetics of each rectangle, sort and pick the highest
score. so in my opinion that experiment is flawed.

you brain can only operate on a limited set of objects especially when
evaluating and comparing qualities. (7+-3 or thereabouts). pick any book about
brain/psychology - it's there.

~~~
mkup
a link to support your argument on Miller's law:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two)

~~~
ashishgandhi
Can't really appreciate enough people help out others "validate" what most of
us feel in our guts.

~~~
bigfudge
You might also like Barry Schwartz' work on choice overload. His book is nice,
but the TED talk captures most of it too:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...](http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html)

------
pg
Cloudant and DotCloud managed to avoid this design gravity well.

~~~
tallanvor
The cloud imagery is present in Cloudant's logo, although it doesn't really
stand out. For dotCloud, though, I don't think a lot of people will notice the
cloud image unless they're specifically looking for it.

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stonemetal
So which is more likely: random multiple co-invention of identical cloud
icons, or someone saw the first and copied it for their cloud icon.

~~~
jinushaun
I think even without having seen those logos, I would draw a cloud the same
way: one big bump with a smaller bump on the side. I wouldn't go as far as
referencing the golden ratio, but something about it feels "right." It's hard
to explain unless you're also artistically inclined.

~~~
stonemetal
True but if you consider that all those icons come from the Apple store,
most(if not all) were created after Apple used it for the mobile me icon.
Following the Golden ratio doesn't explain it all, why aren't any of the icons
symmetric(another one of those things people find beautiful like the golden
ratio), why do all the icons have flat bottoms. There is more similarity than
can be explained by the golden ratio.

~~~
5hoom
Symmetry would probably make it hard to identify as a cloud. It would look
like an inkblot-test picture.

The flat bottoms however, hmm…

[Edit] Well, wavephorm has a good answer to that elsewhere in the discussion:
_Because clouds are flat on the bottom and bumpy on top._ ;)

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toddmorey
I've worked on a few cloud icons and I can tell you it's a tough problem. The
two things that most describe the concept of a cloud in an image are color
(white on blue) and shading to suggest 3D form. Both of those are unavailable
when working to create a simple b/w icon. You're left with describing the
shape, something that's very fluid and doesn't have telling details like the
ears, tail, and feet of a cat, for example. It's not surprising to me that
we're working to agree on a common representation. Circles on top, flat bottom
to suggest something above us.

Deviate too much from the agreed upon shape, and you're likely to get a lot of
"What's that?"

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ryanlelek
Funny to see all of these with similar ratios/circles. Glad to know ours is
original: <http://skyz.am/7xa>

\-- Ryan

~~~
mitjak
_That's_ how 5 year olds draw clouds.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
That's how I draw clouds (and why I hire designers...not to imply they need a
designer, but that I'm so horrible I do...I'll just shut up now...).

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dreamdu5t
As far as I know, there is no objective evidence that demonstrates an
aesthetic preference for the golden ratio, or designs being any more
successful with it.

According to studies done on the matter, nobody has demonstrated said
preference:
[http://plus.maths.org/content/os/issue22/features/golden/ind...](http://plus.maths.org/content/os/issue22/features/golden/index)

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estel
For those that aren't aware of it, Drew Wilson's Pictos icon set is generally
a fantastic piece of art and brilliant tool for anyone designing for the web.

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Gormo
If it's not white on a blue background, it looks like a frog with one eye
open.

~~~
udp
I don't see it.

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jeromeparadis
Am I mistaken or they didn't used the golden ratio for the arrow in their
icon? The arrow seems bulky and weirdly proportioned. I wonder how it would
look like if they did.

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amccloud
We've managed to change it up a bit. <http://pixelcloud.com/>

~~~
Raphael
Why is it flat on the bottom and bumpy on top? To answer my own question, to
follow the baseline of the text and also to fit our preconceived notion of a
cloud icon.

~~~
wavephorm
Because clouds are flat on the bottom and bumpy on top.

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xelipe
I wouldn't be surprised if some commission tries to standardize the cloud icon
much like the power symbol.

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bitwize
The clouds and the bushes are the same!

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samirahmed
i am pretty sure that cloud9 ide has a symmetrical three bubble cloud that is
different

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gaetan

      oO

O__o

