

A flat icon set for OS X - tinalatif
http://flaticns.com

======
jarrett
Philosophically or practically: What's the justification for nearly everyone
switching to flat design? Is there any articulable reason it's "better" than
the rich, three-dimensional style[1] that was previously popular? Or is it
just an arbitrary trend?

Some say the change is driven by high-DPI displays. I disagree. I don't see
any intrinsic reason that flat designs look better than rich, three-
dimensional designs on a high-DPI display. Without a doubt, flat can look
nice, but so can things like this:

[http://www.sequelpro.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/seq...](http://www.sequelpro.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2013/01/sequel-pro-1.0.png)

Another justification I've heard is that it's a reaction to the excesses of
the previous trend. People often point to the leather motif in certain Apple
applications as an example of such excess. But first of all, those examples
are outliers; few designs actually went that far. Second, the existence of a
questionable use of a given style is not an effective argument against that
style in general. Third, "some things were extremely 3d, so now we'll be
extremely flat" seems like contrarianism for contrarianism's sake.

[1] Some call this skeuomorphism. I tend not to, because the term technically
means something narrower than what we're talking about:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph)

~~~
flohofwoe
Frankly, I don't care about the look of the icons (these should be theme-able
anyway), but I do care a lot about the actual application user interface, and
for this, flat design is a step back into the 80's.

Flat design is good as long as there are no important visual cues lost what
elements can be interacted with and which are just passively displaying
information. I really do still have problems in iOS7 to separate passive text
elements from interactive text elements (formerly called "buttons"). Examples
are the contacts list or the famous shift-button of the onscreen keyboard.

Thankfully in OSX 10.10, buttons are still recognizable as buttons, and I like
that less radical flatness much more then iOS7. Although, in the current state
the UI looks a lot like a Gnome skin which tries to mimic OSX though, I hope
that improves until release.

~~~
zephjc
It's not a jump back to the 80s exactly. For example, here is an old NT
screenshot:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/Windows_NT_3.1...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/Windows_NT_3.1.png)

A lot of it is flat, but they use simple bevels for buttons and other
clickable elements, and its reuse on, for example, the buttons in the file
manager window, looks tacky because it appears cluttered and overused. Also,
excessive lines (e.g. for the window borders), high contrast colors, and small
color pallet makes the overall appearance not nice to look at. Also the icon
set suuuuucked.

~~~
flohofwoe
The Windows 3.x UI was always ugly and didn't make any sense ;) But that's the
90's, I'm talking about the 80's.

For instance: AmigaOS 1.3 (notice in the bottom-most screenshot how the
buttons don't have '3D edges':

[http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga1.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga1.html)

'3D' UI elements were introduced later in AmigaOS2.0, and I remember how the
user interface style guide made a big fuzz about how UI elements that appear
raised are supposed to be clickable while flat or recessed elements shall be
used for non-interactive or disabled UI elements which cannot be interacted
with.

Actually this site is a pretty awesome collection of operating system UIs.
BeOS still looks nice, almost like retro-modern pixel-art.

~~~
zephjc
Everyone knows the early 90s was part of the 80s!

Older UIs like the Amiga OS one suffered from an even more limited pallet, and
even worse typography.

I used BeOS as my main OS for a while and really liked it - it was very snappy
and felt more "homey" (that is, more like classic MacOS) than early OSX
versions did. (The browser, NetPositive, was absolutely awful though).

------
TarpitCarnivore
I may be in the minority, but these feel really boring and dull to me. I think
there is a way to have a "flat" icon while still providing some depth to them.

I've also seen dozens and dozens of flat icon sets for Android that basically
have this same exact look. Just go to XDA or the Play Store and search "flat
icons", I'm sure you'll find a bunch that have a mix of these designs.

~~~
themoonbus
I think one of the main issues for me is the lack of saturation... the color
palette is a little pastel.

~~~
yaeger
Everything looks like it is covered in a thick layer of dust.

Looking at these icons makes me want to lick my finger and swish across my
screen to remove the dust from those.

------
S_A_P
I like these, but they seem a bit fuzzy to my non retina macbook display.
Particularly the music and calendar app icons just seem overly aliased. Can
anyone else confirm?

~~~
tinalatif
They were designed on a retina screen but I'm not sure why that's happening.
I'll have a look and see what I can do!

~~~
dictum
I disabled the width property (width: 12.5%) for the .icon class and the icons
look crisp now.

~~~
tinalatif
Thanks for looking into this!

------
reubenmorais
Icon sets suck. They aim for system-wide consistency, but can never achieve
it, because there are N+1 icons to be replaced. They focus too much on any
given design pattern (flat, round squares, dark, etc.), and forget the basics:
icons should represent the program, they should be memorable. The only
sensible use case for an icon set I can think of is a graphic designer who
wants to practice.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
With you until the last sentence. How about icon sets for those who are colour
blind? Whilst I'm sure you could, to some extent, automatically convert, I'm
also sure there are nuances that only a human designer could cater for. Also,
how about different sets for different nationalities/cultures between whom
analogies can vary greatly.

It would be nice to solve the N+1 problem with a semantic hierarchy providing
fallbacks, particularly in the case when only one application within a
specific group is installed.

------
Vanayad
I do not understand this trend of 'flat design'. It looks horrible. It started
with Apple and the other copied it. Now microsoft has it, google started
implementing it, samsung as well. It looks horrible.

~~~
abhinavk
Well. Microsoft had it first with Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. But yes it is
now everywhere. Latest KDE Plasma release is flat too and other DEs will soon
follow suit.

------
keehun
Seems like you can't change the calendar icon. The calendar ICNS is used for
the first time after cache reset, but once calendar opens, it uses its own
embedded empty calendar icon and fills in the date. Any way for liteicon to
change that blank calendar? I noticed you provided the blank calendar icns. I
suppose I could open up Calendar and replace it to try it out.

~~~
tinalatif
Oops, good call, calendar has to be done manually a little bit differently. I
forgot to add instructions for that - I'll do it tonight

------
kepano
Along the same vein: [http://appicns.com](http://appicns.com)

~~~
gerbal
Those are too abstracted, it's hard to figure out what they are icons for. For
instance, the Adobe suite icons are impossible to decipher.

------
jason_slack
Thanks for releasing these. I am changing over now! Hoping my dock and icons
flow better.

Here is my new dock: [http://imgur.com/2vEM5Yv](http://imgur.com/2vEM5Yv)

Why the down vote?

~~~
abhinavk
1\. You complained about the downvote.

2\. Image is low-resolution.

~~~
jason_slack
so I got downvoted for taking a picture of my exact dock, exact size? So I
should have made my dock way larger and posted a better quality picture?

All I was doing was telling the author that I liked what she did and showing
that I did indeed take time to implement it.

~~~
tinalatif
For what it's worth, I appreciate it :)

------
hlfcoding
If you want to implement minimalist design, you might as well go the full nine
yards and use no more than 2-3 (properly contrasting) colors. This is middle-
of-the-road and frankly evokes neither elegance nor brilliance.

To elaborate on why the above may be interpreted as harsh, by limiting the
ingredients at your disposal to flat colors and simple shapes, you run the
risk of amplifying the severity of any mistakes in their selection. The less
visual information that get presented, the more the visual units come under
closer scrutiny.

------
_pmf_
Windows 3.11 HD

~~~
davidw
Mac isn't bad in the historic flat design department either:
[https://twitter.com/JonyIveParody/status/486510620276441088/...](https://twitter.com/JonyIveParody/status/486510620276441088/photo/1)

------
neobaba1289
I like them.. They might just get used if OS X goes flat..

------
netnichols
Nice job! Just missing a Facebook icon for my Facebook SSB.

~~~
tinalatif
Coming up soon!

------
batmansbelt
I don't like the firefox one.

