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

[typeadam]

Change that atrocious Camera icon...

 

[dec.]

It's ridiculous how a single designer can, within days, go in and tweak all the icons to make them more presentable than what Apple has so far. Those are small tweaks but they're all for the better.

It's all been discussed many, many times by now, but anyway:

I agree completely. It looks cleaner, more uniform.
Apple's design looks overloaded, it's far too busy - the gradients are in different directions, the thin teeth of the cogwheel in the settings icon are overkill, it looks like it's moving, the nonsensical game center icon has gloss on it which alienates it from the rest, the fonts look unclean, unbalanced.

The redesign cleans up so much of those issues, alone by switching the gradients to a uniform direction and slightly muting the shrill green and cyans in them, they have become not only tolerable for me but they look quite good.

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iHate... this forum is full of it.

Its incredibly easy to criticise and difficult to create. This entire thread is a prefect example of navel gazers who have no ability to create and just love to hate on everything as if they are all high and mighty. In reality, they will all buy the new devices or collect their cheques from Samsung etc for their forum posts.

I don't think that one has to create to be able to judge. Actually it would be fatal to any design process as it would mean to just swallow whatever the designers feed you. In a perfect world Apple would have delivered an amazing product that left no room for criticism, but that did not happen. I pay for their products and I have demands and expectations on which my choices are based. Hopefully Apple will be able to stand up to them.

Don't confuse the criticism and negative feedback from regular customers with the few regular trolls on here that just try to get off on posting "how ****** Apple is". Unfortunately by generalizing any criticism you feed those trolls by "amusing them"... ;-)

 

[Xiroteus]

I like the control that you can swipe up aside from that WAY too much is white, like white on white with a dash of white which I am not a fan of in any manner.

 

[dannys1]

That is an opinion (and actually I don't share it) - but, this is all so subjective.

Even if I were an icon designer by profession with oodles of education and experience and I said they were crap wouldn't make them crap, it would be my opinion. We don't even know the brief the group got, we just look at them and say, nice or not, or mostly, "I just don't care enough one way or the other, they're just icons" (in a beta demonstration). For every designer that comes up with arguments against them we can find 2 who will disagree with that designer, and probably not agree with each other.

The whole issue is so silly. There will never be universal agreement over any element of the OS, especially the visual ones, but to get all worked up about an icon seems to me just a bit to be a complete waste of one's energy and time. It's not as big a deal as people here think it is, it really isn't. And they aren't final. Even if they make the cut to final release, over time they won't stay the same, and shortly after release everyone will get used to them and forget all about it.

Pretty much every icon on this is better than the ones Apple are going with - designers did these in less than a week!! http://blog.iconfinder.com/icons-of-the-week-10-ios7-concepts/#more-1460

Oh and you still want to argue that the opinion of designers that the icons are terrible? Read this and tell me the same - http://blog.iconfinder.com/a-closer-look-at-the-ios7-icons/

 

[Zerilos]

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.

I'm gong to back track a bit. Having seen the new screen for 3 days now, I prefer the old icons. Again, not a deal breaker by any stretch, but not crazy about the stock app icons. I'll probably toss most into a folder. Most likely 3rd party developers will do a better job.

 

[WilliamLondon]

Pretty much every icon on this is better than the ones Apple are going with - designers did these in less than a week!! http://blog.iconfinder.com/icons-of-the-week-10-ios7-concepts/#more-1460

Oh and you still want to argue that the opinion of designers that the icons are terrible? Read this and tell me the same - http://blog.iconfinder.com/a-closer-look-at-the-ios7-icons/

It's pointless to argue about the subjective nature of this - not even designers agree, which just supports my point, that it's pure opinion. And back to my original point, it's people getting (or at this point it's more like they're trying to stay) all worked up about icons. The whole brouhaha has died down significantly because everyone is realising that not only are they just icons, but there are reasons behind the changes (which make quite a lot of sense), and the vocal nature of the people who reacted negatively doesn't translate into percentage of upset, but merely only represents volume in decibels as opposed to quantity.

This upset all will pass.

What is interesting, though, is the session at WWDC - at Rogifan's suggestion, I downloaded the app and watched it. Prior to my marketing days, I spent a few years as a UI engineer myself, and UI stuff is always so interesting, especially how it's matured into user experience (not just simple UI design and development anymore), so I found the session extremely fascinating. Have you watched it? I loved listening to their thinking which drove decisions in the initial versions of iOS, why things were the way they were then, and why they've changed and what they see for the OS going forward. There's a lot of thinking they put into these UIs, and it's so interesting to hear it from the teams themselves that were involved. The session is What's New in iOS 7 UI Design (or something like that, sorry can't remember the exact session, but it's listed in the videos section of the app you can download).

 

[Xiroteus]

The dock is odd, when I had a jailbreak I would remove it for a cleaner look along with removing app names, things I would not to be able to do. Speaking for myself there is no real reason to have a highlighted area for the dock.

 

[saboteur]

And if you think the previous version of iOS was subtle and green felt and faux leather was great design then I don't know what to say.

Don't get me wrong. I don't like the green felt. I'm just saying that you don't need to go from one edge to the other. And if you do, you should be ready to truly rethink things. They didn't, they just changed the design on a superficial way.

 

[muncyweb]

Sounds like they've got some work left to do. Hopefully they'll "masculinify" it a bit more.

 

[dannys1]

It's pointless to argue about the subjective nature of this - not even designers agree, which just supports my point, that it's pure opinion. And back to my original point, it's people getting (or at this point it's more like they're trying to stay) all worked up about icons. The whole brouhaha has died down significantly because everyone is realising that not only are they just icons, but there are reasons behind the changes (which make quite a lot of sense), and the vocal nature of the people who reacted negatively doesn't translate into percentage of upset, but merely only represents volume in decibels as opposed to quantity.

This upset all will pass.

What is interesting, though, is the session at WWDC - at Rogifan's suggestion, I downloaded the app and watched it. Prior to my marketing days, I spent a few years as a UI engineer myself, and UI stuff is always so interesting, especially how it's matured into user experience (not just simple UI design and development anymore), so I found the session extremely fascinating. Have you watched it? I loved listening to their thinking which drove decisions in the initial versions of iOS, why things were the way they were then, and why they've changed and what they see for the OS going forward. There's a lot of thinking they put into these UIs, and it's so interesting to hear it from the teams themselves that were involved. The session is What's New in iOS 7 UI Design (or something like that, sorry can't remember the exact session, but it's listed in the videos section of the app you can download).

Yes I've watched both iOS7 sessions in full on the app - problem is they don't follow the grid as they suggest - the guy even hinted about the icons.

And sorry you can keep pretending the mass census is that the icons are bad (and I'm sorry but icons are VERY important) but I've given you now 3 LARGE example and sample pools where the consensus is many more people think they are amateur and poor - and even being subjective there is NO WAY you can disagree that the guys icons in the first post are not better than what Apple dished up, following the SAME grid and the SAME design principle.

 

[WilliamLondon]

Yes I've watched both iOS7 sessions in full on the app - problem is they don't follow the grid as they suggest - the guy even hinted about the icons.

And sorry you can keep pretending the mass census is that the icons are bad (and I'm sorry but icons are VERY important) but I've given you now 3 LARGE example and sample pools where the consensus is many more people think they are amateur and poor - and even being subjective there is NO WAY you can disagree that the guys icons in the first post are not better than what Apple dished up, following the SAME grid and the SAME design principle.

You keep trying to convince me that opinions are facts, and that is a ludicrous and idiotic undertaking. More people with the same opinion still doesn't make it fact.

This whole icon issue, beyond the facts vs. opinions nonsense, is such a great illustration of being unable to see the forest for the trees.

 

[dannys1]

You keep trying to convince me that opinions are facts, and that is a ludicrous and idiotic undertaking. More people with the same opinion still doesn't make it fact.

This whole icon issue, beyond the facts vs. opinions nonsense, is such a great illustration of being unable to see the forest for the trees.

Ermm, no I'm not trying to convince you opinions are facts, I'm trying to convince you that its fact thats more opinions dislike them - a lot lot lot more. Companies work on public feedback you know, its important, for sales and stuff - opinions make up sales, opinions make up money, opinions decide if a product succeeds or fails, pretty simple really.

 

[DaffyDuck]

I disagree. Apple has had some stunning marketing over the years. Consider that Jony Ive KNOWS those people, they're not just marketing suits to him.

And frankly, this is scarcely news. The obvious thing to say is DUH. Of course its going to change, its not like Apple had a blindfold when presenting the icon designs. Stuff is going to change. They know its nutty looking. I don't think there is much divisiveness in the overall UI design. Everyone I'm speaking to and reading is really enjoying their time with it. Except Android fans, who are really big time feature creatures. They really don't get the concept of artfulness at all.

This comment is just absurd. First off, these icons wouldn't have seen the light of day if Steve Jobs was still around. Also, these icons look cheap compared to Google's icons, or even iOS 6 icons, which I think were better than Google's.

 

[winston1236]

iHate... this forum is full of it.

Its incredibly easy to criticise and difficult to create. This entire thread is a prefect example of navel gazers who have no ability to create and just love to hate on everything as if they are all high and mighty. In reality, they will all buy the new devices or collect their cheques from Samsung etc for their forum posts.

It's a forum, we're here to discuss not attack those with dissenting opinions. So relax and remember, some of us are here because we love our mac computers but don't care for the apple phone.

 

[Grohowiak]

This comment is just absurd. First off, these icons wouldn't have seen the light of day if Steve Jobs was still around. Also, these icons look cheap compared to Google's icons, or even iOS 6 icons, which I think were better than Google's.

They look cheap compared to anything. Being distributed under a company with $150B+ in the bank just proves that they are nothing without Jobs.
That thing is just pure ugly and counterproductive with all the white or even less apss in folders and etc. Amateurs.