
Inspecting Yosemite's Icons - e1ven
http://martiancraft.com/blog/2014/07/inspecting-yosemite-icons/
======
anoxic
I didn't like the new iOS7 icons and I categorically dismissed the Yosemite
icons as well. In light of this article, I realize, these icons /make sense/.
More than that, it forced me to actually look closely at them. And I also
realized that I don't like the icons in Mavericks either, I was just used to
it already.

The consistency and pattern behind the new icons is well thought out, and the
use of subtle lighting effects (the blue and orange undertones) is great art
direction and seems to pull things together in a great way.

What I don't like is the bright colors and the undertone of a "default"
feeling -- like how many of the icons feel like generic dingbats. But this
also seems consistent with Apple's use of Helvetica, which gives me the same
feeling. Which is somewhere between totally not noticing it's there, and
feeling like it's an evil faceless government/corporation.

Made me think.

~~~
rschmitty
> The consistency and pattern behind the new icons is well thought out, and
> the use of subtle lighting effects (the blue and orange undertones) is great
> art direction

Made me think they copied the current "hot" of colors, just like going flat
after everyone else

[http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-
poster...](http://www.slashfilm.com/orangeblue-contrast-in-movie-posters/)

It's not that I super dislike it, more than I always thought of apple as a
leader instead of follower when it came to design and perhaps I didn't realize
how much they lost talent wise.

The only thing I truly don't like is notepad lost its full on yellow 'notepad
paper' look. The difference between notepad and pages was very obvious prior,
now it is subtle

~~~
arrrg
Notepads are pretty much only yellow in the US. I see that mostly as an
internationalisation issue, to be honest. (That said, “folders” also don’t
necessarily look that way on many places on Earth besides the US.)

------
bithush
I am not an icon or graphics expert but in my layman's opinion Apple always
have such beautiful icons. One of my little hates about Windows is how
Microsoft are lazy at things such as icons. We have a mixture of new and old
icons all through the system and it makes things look ugly. Shame really as it
really cannot be that difficult to spend some time making things look
consistent and nice. Oh well maybe in Windows 9 ;)

------
DAddYE
Amazing work! I'm not a designer but I can still appreciate the importance of
details.

However there are things that I can't explain, all icons are colorful, except
launchpad and system preference.

They seems to me totally out of the entire system style.

I read the "trick" about white ball and chrome/reflective one, however they
still look "aliens" in my dock, like a shareware cheap app. Also this metallic
icon is used for iCloud and again I don't get the connection on why Apple
pickup "metallic" for something and why "color" for another.

------
cocoflunchy
On the subject of Yosemite's design, can someone explain to me what this big
cog icon is doing in the middle of the Finder's buttons?
([http://imgur.com/0RWEzG1](http://imgur.com/0RWEzG1))

Clicking on it has no effect and it seems like it's a repeat of the button on
the left... it's really weird.

~~~
hamstergene
Must be an unfinished or deleted button. The image is standard `NSAdvanced`
system image, which is usually first in the drop-down lists in Xcode. When a
developer does not have final graphics and needs to pick just anything they
often click the first one in the list, this one.

~~~
demallien
It's not a button, and isn't supposed to be one. It even has a shadow
underneath it - I'm _hoping_ it's just a way of quickly being able to identify
that a Mac is running a beta of Mac OS X, and that it will go away with the
official release.

------
totoroisalive
Not being a designer, I usually just like the way something looks or how bad
it looks, but somehow this article feels like when you are analyzing a piece
of code or when doing a teardown on a piece of hardware to know how it works.

The effort to make something looks great , not for everyone for obvious and
subjectives reasons, is beyond the wow and meh attitude, so many pieces must
found their way to look good or plain bad.

The whole idea of making a seamless transition from your phone to your tablet
and to your computer and back again is amazing.

------
grumblestumble
There's a somewhat throwaway line in there - "It’s as though Apple used the
Yosemite wallpaper as the environment map for the new icons." \- that made me
think how it would be possible to find the highlight/shadow hue for any given
wallpaper and apply it to the icon set. I imagine it would be technically easy
to accomplish with vector graphics.

~~~
Synaesthesia
You could do it to raster graphics too with a gradient map, replace a
greyscale gradient with a subtly colorised one. This would possible require a
separate layer channel on the icon for the regions to be mapped.

------
aljungberg
It's easy to make consistent icons as long as you don't mind them being ugly.
What's hard is striking a balance. Apple used to have this balance: reasonable
consistency yet beautiful icons with a touch of delight and sense of
workmanship.

If we go from what we had to rulers and paint by numbers we might as well
forego design altogether and just write a computer program to generate all
icons.

~~~
zimbatm
Or show a shrinked-down screenshot of the application. At least there would be
a correlation between the application and it's icon.

Responsive design all the way to the icon.

------
ricardobeat
Note that he wisely completely ignored the new (iOS7) Game Center icon, which
doesn't conform to any guidelines past or present, and only _kind of works_
with a white background. Let's hope that eyesore goes away before the final
release.

~~~
jayvanguard
Game Center has always been kind of weird. Is it done in a location other than
Cupertino perhaps?

------
TD-Linux
Just a nitpick, the effect of light bleeding from one diffuse surface to
another is achieved in rendering with global illumination. Ambient occlusion
is an approximation of GI and cannot simulate this sort of color bleed.

~~~
ykl
Sure you can, just tint your AO pass before comp.

------
verisimilitude
I use a vertical dock on OS X; I wonder if this lighting still makes sense or
looks "right" when icons are stacked up in a vertical dock?

------
wowsig
The dissection is just perfect. Although the tilted rectangle still doesn't
make so much sense within the grid. The grid with the tilted one looks to me
an afterthought imposition. Although the idea that third party apps could use
more of the tilted grid seems good as it would created a visual difference
that is easy to note.

------
moe
I like the old icons better.

The new ones just look washed out to me.

And everything to the right of the Gamecenter icon (seriously, wtf happened to
the gamecenter icon?) looks like someone ran out of deadline...

------
cheepin
I thought this would be about Half Dome or El Cap.

------
dirkgently
When the most discussed aspects of an OS on a technical forum like HN are the
icons and UI, it's time to take my coat and leave.

~~~
chockablock
Consider just sitting out the thread if the topic doesn't interest you.

------
jokoon
indeed, better looking cars sell much better

me, being poor, if I could use xfce on mac, I would. I use icons only if it's
more compact than text. I love small icons.

Nice to see apple take the minimalist road.

------
pocketstar
they changed the finder icon! OUTRAGE!!!!

------
yunong
I don't know apple, could you maybe stop spending all your time on the
aesthetics of your OS and actually fix some real problems? How about the fact
that SMB doesn't work [1], or that you've broken large parts of Dtrace? How
about not panicking when someone plugs in an external monitor, or providing
symbols for core dumps [2]? This is the reason no one uses Mac OS X for
anything serious.

[1] [http://blogs.computerworld.com/mac-os-x/23872/essential-
os-x...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/mac-os-x/23872/essential-os-x-
mavericks-problem-solving-guide) [2]
[http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-05-23/osx-10.9.3-is-
to...](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2014-05-23/osx-10.9.3-is-toxic.html)

~~~
MrScruff
I highly doubt the engineers responsible for Dtrace are designing icons.

~~~
lotyrin
No, but there's still a decision made at some level in the organization which
affects the sizes and budgets of the respective teams.

~~~
threeseed
Sure. And I don't know anyone who would prioritise fixing DTrace who a handful
of people in the world care about over refreshing the look and feel which
affects everyone.

