Jony Ive Put Apple's Marketing Team in Charge of iOS 7 Icon Design

[Campbellot]

Brilliant!!

Let the marketing department design what they feel is best insofar as marketing of icons. Release it to the hard core fans. We unleash praise and criticism. They take cues from our feedback and come up with a very polished product by the time the GM is released. Brilliant!!

 

[Zerilos]

I guess I'm in the minority but I actually like the new icons.

I've seen several videos of iOS 7 recently, and honestly I think they look just fine. Of course, the look of the icons has got to be the least important of the changes made and yet is getting most of the attention. If they decide to keep the current icons, that's fine but I really don't care either way.

 

[cmichaelb]

In my short experience with iOS 7 it seems that the more "experienced" iOS user finds the new look rather... too colourful... but, the younger teenager seems to find the new look super cool.

Well, I'm 45, been an iOS user since 2008 (1st gen iPod Touch), and I think iOS7 is gorgeous as presented on Monday. For the first time in a long while, I thought Apple was firing on all cylinders throughout the entire Keynote.

Well I'm 41 and an iOS user since 2007 and I wish they had not gone with a lighter 1950's Swiss Modernism look. I remember this look in old Tom and Jerry cartoons and Rankin Bass stop motion.

I do agree this was a strong confident Apple. The strongest and most confident since Jobs passing.

But let's face it, the new features catch up to, and in some areas, jump past Android, but the icons and color palette are weaknesses.

The transparency is nice but takes it toll on power. I would love to have an option to turn that off. But it makes Ive's goal of having the OS conform to the color of the hardware possible. After using the beta, I can see how it does blend better with white faced devices.

The only one I'd say is significantly improved is the compass icon. All the others are step backward in my designer opinion.

Reminds me of analog aircraft gauges. I really like it.

 

[doug in albq]

Yeah, but the problem is that interaction design is not the same as visual design. Everyone has a balance but there are plenty of people who are trained or hone the skills specifically related to interface usability, iconography, and interaction models. It is all but self evident that the icons are completely screwed up. Readability issues at times. Again, overall it's a great design– but they need some specialists to take the reigns now.

totally agree with everything you said. However, as I am sure you know, some designers are more "generalists" or "all-arounders" while others are very specific.

I actually do not think Ive off-sourced all this work to the Marketing department, and he is a hardware guy...so its all complicated.

 

[iMLo]

those Google ones are much better that the current iOS 7 app icons.

They are very bland and boring to me.

 

[tai.michael]

This makes complete sense now

This makes complete sense now. Notice how all the colors are completely saturated. Extremely saturated. Interface / digital designers know that using colors is all about subtlety and it's relation to other colors. Notice how the Mail App Icon goes from really saturated teal to really saturated blue. In Interface Design 101, that is a complete no no. A complete amateur mistake. You can do this inside a letter but not as a background palette in such a small space.

Another point to make out is that Jon Ivy is a hardware designer, not software. How colors look in print versus digital is very different. In digital design, you rarely will ever use really saturated colors.

A part of me feels they did this intentionally kinda like Coke did with Coca Cola classic, because honestly I don't think there is much you can do to improve the aesthetics of interface design. It in a sense has reached maturity. Improvements can still be made be user experience-wise.

 

[syd430]

This refresh of iOS will not live or die because a few loud and obnoxious people with nothing better to do than constantly criticise.

Dude, half the Internet is in uproar over these icons. There's almost unanimous agreement that there is something seriously off with them.

People are passionate because they hold Apple to a very high standard. A rush job is not what they expect from Apple and is not what they are used to. If Blackberry released this poorly thought out rush job, few people would even take notice. Apple is not Blackberry and we expect them to be leading the way, not delegating their design to their ****ing marketing department.

 

[bkushner]

Funny how everyone on this thread believes The Next Web's sources. Nobody saw these changes coming before and nobody is leaking anything accurate now.
Apple would not have Marketing design their icons. Seriously. Also, i have seen hundreds of pages of users of these forums jail broken icons and most of you have no taste. Plus, the most popular icon sets are extremely skeumorphic. So, just relax and enjoy the OS. The icons look great.

 

[acidblue]

It is good news that it will change.

Now they can announce 10.9 will really be called "Sea Lion"

They already did that as a joke at WWDC.

 

[deafphillymac]

Due to my deafness, I watched the film with the closed captioned on this forum that explained everything about iO7 so I understood clear. Two days ago there was the film announcing on MacRumor page, but didn't show closed captioned that I didn't know what's going on, but I was impressed about some new designs.

Thank you for putting the closed captioned on the film.

Dennis

 

[hglk]

Hmm... Or... Maybe Apple just leaked this to justify why the app icons look the way they do, and to have a good excuse why they'll change them upon the official release, even though, this is how they intended to have them look all along. At first they were designed with a grid system and were well thought out, and after all of the uproar over the look of them, "oh, we just gave that job to marketing". Just saying.

Image

If you take a closer look you will realize that most of the icons here are not even used, so to speak. There are similar icons in the beta release, but not the same. Take the weather icon or the passbook icon, and even the game enter icon. They are different here than in the beta, further strengthening their statement that this is a work in progress.

 

[teejaysyke]

I think all the icons should be a solid color, not a gradient, and a lot of the icons with white backgrounds (photos, safari, etc, etc) need to be re-done.

Photos could be a polaroid with a background color (like mail)
Game Center could be a Dart Board or something game related
Safari would be fine if the whole icon was blue
Calendar needs the bullets to be the same color.

Everything else is fine, just less gradients, it makes me think a 5 year old with access to paint made them.

 

[Yamcha]

lol no wonder . Dribbble designers were raging on the iOS7 icon design..

 

[deafphillymac]

I think ios 7 has much bigger visual flaws than the icons. When mixed with your personal icons, the icon set looks great (except for Safari...good golly miss Molly #)

- not enough contrast
- no buttons
- dark live wallpapers are needed
- no drop shadows
- orb signal bar (really?)

I absolutely agree with you 100%.

 

[Jimrod]

I took the term "marketing department" to mean the team of artists responsible for Apple's very high quality web, print, and other marketing design — not sales reps. Apparently the engineers and interface people gave us the God-awful skeuomorphisms like game center, OSX's iCal, etc. I for one welcome the ditching of the endless drop shadows and sheen. In my 30 years as a graphic artist, I tend to see engineer/interface-types as those who cannot resist the temptation to bevel, emboss, shellac, marbleize, chrome plate, and otherwise destroy any clean functional design with vomitus masses of eye candy. Way to go Jony!

I agree about most of this but must admit that I can see the importance of drop shadows in iOS as they help increase legibility - with the current "flat" icons you have to be quite selective about your wallpaper or the text and some icons will blend in. This variable factor will always be a problem unless you have a visual buffer between icon/text and that random wallpaper element.

 

[.:Aleph:.]

Explains a lot.... dot dot dot ....

That explains that.

Wow. That explains a lot indeed, but why oh why...

Apple has entire teams of excellent designers. Not hardware designers, graphic designers.

What.

Anyway, this is kind of good news. That they're saying it's a WIP is confirmation that they've heard us.

Phew, I thought Ive had lost his mind. I think of the cheap world of Samsung and Microsoft using iOS 7 beta 1. Please fix it.

Thank gawd! There is hope!

It explains things partly and doesn't exclude the possibility of Jonathan Ive "losing his mind": he still said OK to all of this, where was the judgment and criticism?

 

[Jimrod]

So Ives is throwing another team under the bus because he has no taste for software and could not tell how bad this looks.

Frankly the whole flat thing is ugly but worse than that - it is worse user interface. My non power using friends who have never heard of macrumors are going to see an update - download and install it and freak out because they no longer can use their phones. Do I tap the edit words? Is if a button? I don't know. These changes are the ultimate form over function, supposedly exactly what they told us they were not doing. Pretty sad state for so many users to update to find out they no longer know how to use their phones because 7 years of metaphors have been broken to keep up with a style invented for Microsoft to save power on their tablets. Trendy crap.

I don't understand the change to the interface. The thing iOS seems to need to me is some sort of file system so your saves persist when you delete a game and better cloud. These changes just don't help.

Sadly it actually took me a day to get used to swiping the right way to unlock my phone with iOS 7 even though I thought this kind of movement would just be intuitive/muscle memory. Where it says "Swipe to unlock" you now have an arrow pointing up and no indication to swipe right or left... :\

 

[tripmusic]

Its good to see the consensus here more or less is the OS looks better, but the icons gotta go. I feel the same. That Safari icon is pretty bad. They'll get it. They always do. I really enjoyed that WWDC. You could really hear & feel the excitement in Tim & Co's voices. They seemed relaxed. They know they still have work to do, but the road ahead isn't looking as grim as some have speculated. They're starting to now believe that they can steer this ship without Steve. His spirit will never leave them. God, if only I could get my hands on the power of the new Mac Pro.

 

[a0me]

I would deny responsibility for those icons also.



The site goes on to note that the design is a "firmly a 'work in progress'", and that the look and feel of the icons and other new UI bits are likely to change significantly as the iOS 7 beta proceeds.

I called this one also...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1594492/

I hope this is true. iOS 7 has some of the ugliest icons (Safari, Photos, Control Center (and its UI), folders, etc...) I have ever seen.

 

[Bluesdealer]

Icons look good to me. iOS7, as a whole, knocks it out of the park

The current version of iOS looks completely old and stale. Shiny 3D gradients, rife with skueomorphic aesthetic? It's completely 2005.

It's a sad day when Microsoft's designers are ahead of Apple, but that's exactly what happened with Windows Phone. Now, Apple finally gets the right people in charge, since the departure of Jobs, innovates the hell out of iOS' UI with a more functional, bold, innovative design, and out come the sticks in the mud, crying "Wah! I want my fake 3D shiny gradients!" Please. Embrace progress or shut up about it.

The icons are great in making it clear that Apple has no intention of wallowing in stagnation.

 

[WilliamG]

Sadly it actually took me a day to get used to swiping the right way to unlock my phone with iOS 7 even though I thought this kind of movement would just be intuitive/muscle memory. Where it says "Swipe to unlock" you now have an arrow pointing up and no indication to swipe right or left... :\

That up arrow is a HUGE misstep of misdirection. If you have to just "know" that you can do that from any screen, you should just "know" you can do it from the lock screen. Or just make it a row of dots on the bottom. ANYTHING but an up arrow! Also, why can't you swipe to the left to unlock the screen, too? Makes a lot more sense for a lefty, or for those using their left hand when they grab their phone.

 

[robotsluvblood]

yucks

the rage to innovate, people seem to demand a total re-invention of ui every few years, surely not an easy task to do - if it ain't broken don't fix it. that being said the candy mints have started to look dated, comfortable, something...

was pretty excited about seeing how apple would answer metro. yes metro was just swiss design (not original thinking), but we all stand on shoulders. so how DID apple answer metro? beg, borrow and steal mostly.

first time i've really been ashamed of apple. but then steve is gone so this is a different apple altogether. i believe the apple some of us loved (and loved us) unfortunately died with steve. part of me thought they put cook up there as the half-assed fumbling fill-in and then Ives could come along and save the day and win the kingdom. afterall; no-one would have fared very well after jobs.

but looks like Ives hasn't stepped up, yes the hardware may shine but how we interface with it now looks like carnival puke (icons), and they've stolen the same skinny fonts, flat layouts, and translucency that have been done before, by others, their competitors. evolution is supposed to be a spiral not a circle.

they can back peddle and say 'still baking' but the truth is the old apple would not have released such crap, they understood presentation is everything. nothing magical about a turd (in progress or not).

stop stealing mr. ives, get back to really delivering innovative products and interfaces instead of rehashing other peoples lunch. you have fanboys and loyalty for a reason. you were supposed to use this release to step up to the plate and step in his shoes instead i can comfortably call this one both bad form and a failure.

 

[pixelshaders]

The current version of iOS looks completely old and stale. Shiny 3D gradients, rife with skueomorphic aesthetic? It's completely 2005.

It's a sad day when Microsoft's designers are ahead of Apple, but that's exactly what happened with Windows Phone. Now, Apple finally gets the right people in charge, since the departure of Jobs, innovates the hell out of iOS' UI with a more functional, bold, innovative design, and out come the sticks in the mud, crying "Wah! I want my fake 3D shiny gradients!" Please. Embrace progress or shut up about it.

The icons are great in making it clear that Apple has no intention of wallowing in stagnation.

3D gradients, skueomorphic, still can make better modem design than flat theme if Apple done it right

 

[sillypooh]

It does explain a lot. The difference between the insides and the icons was flagrant.

Skeuomorphism isn't bad in itself. There are many cases where it is a preferred approach. I never minded the linen of Mac OS for example. It actually showed some taste and contrast with other operating systems. Anyone can make a dull background gradient.

But the icons is something you are meant to touch and grab. It feels like it does deserve that kind of emotion, feel and touch. The old icons had detail and depth and were pleasing to look at. Not the new ones.

Flat design doesn't mean boring. There are thousand of instances of beautiful, emotional flat design. This just isn't it.

 

[Neodym]

we rolled them out to see what everyone thinks, and since everyone hates them, we will be changing them

So true! First thing that came to my mind when reading the article: 'Oh wow - they named a scapegoat so Ive's reputation does not get tarnished...'

Here it is again, so people can put the old and new into perspective.

Thanks for posting that - confirms me in my refusal of iOS 7's appearance.

i think this might work better in international market. remember, apple didn't design this just for the westerners.

Umm - "the westerners" are not limited to US people and the international market is more than just "the easterners"! I'm from Europe and i'm not alone in _not_ liking the presented design.

look at popular culture/arts/decors in japan or south korea or taiwan, their design/colors are a lot brighter too.

...therefore it would be okay if _their_ products looked that way. Apple doing this feels somehow... unauthentic.

I'm surprised they didn't drop the requirement for rounded corners and make the icons square by default. Square icons would be more in keeping with the minimalist feel.

Rounded corners have been a signature design element for Apple for decades now.

Skeuomorphism isn't bad in itself. There are many cases where it is a preferred approach. I never minded the linen of Mac OS for example. It actually showed some taste and contrast with other operating systems. Anyone can make a dull background gradient.

q.f.t.