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

[oliversl]

Fire them, the whole team, now!
And demote Jony to hardware, just for approving such a icon set.

I just look at the camera icon on iOS6 and then a the iOS7 icon, it just made me cry. They are destroying years of learning bringing nothing big to iOS design.

D*mn I'm angry

 

[qpdbqp]

Change is good. But what I see is pure crap. If I saw those icons in a potential employees portfolio, I'd keep looking.

• The radius on the corners looks like they been increased and feels awkward.
• For the gradients, it looks like someone just discovered the overlay blending mode in PS or AI. It's so harsh.
• There's not enough white space around some of them (safari, iTunes, clock, etc)
• In most cases, and especially here, I seriously hate gradients the go from dark to light.

Start over.

 

[kmj2318]

Wtf is that weather icon? Probably a version they didn't use. It's be cool if they can have a live one. It seems like such a tease of future live icons with the clock app.... The time is already at the top!

Yeah, for some reason that's what's on the website. I think we'll be seeing the live weather icon soon.

 

[baryon]

I like the new icons quite a lot, and although they don't feel perfect, I think they give iOS a younger, more modern look, which I like. The old icons were a bit over-detailed, with too much texture (cross hatching) and strange colors (orange for Music) and starbursts in the background, some with gloss, others with just shading… It looked fine but not as unified and stylish as the new ones.

I also always found the black dominant theme to be odd (black background for the original iPhone) and lots of dark buttons, controls, and bars… While Apple was always very brave to use white and light grey everywhere else. So I think the design direction as a whole makes a lot of sense, and is very Apple-like, but with some things not quite fitting in yet (the big rectangle "buttons" for Answer and Decline, etc... look very wrong to me, for example).

I think they've gone in the right direction, but they're not exactly there yet.

 

[downpour]

there was no shadow and gloss effect at the icon level. for this particular icon (game center), it simply is a picture of what game center looks like. if u open game center, u will see exactly that, those four circles.

Which also needs to change, because it is totally out of keeping with everything else in the OS... and ugly as hell.

 

[Zauberer]

I overall liked the new design for iOS. The icons were decent, but I think the Safari icon is hideous.

 

[troop231]

Icons are now 120 x 120 px as well, too big IMO. I prefer 114 x 114 px. Also, icon radius looks worse now.

 

[curmi]

Except Apple has never significantly change the design during the beta period. It isn't obvious at all. If people don't like it, they should complain so that Apple hears.

Agreed. The icons will not change significantly, I feel sure. For a start, Jony did that whole video they showed in the keynote (to the world) where he talked about how wonderful the icons were - the design and the colours - and showed how they were designed. Apple aren't going to now change them beyond a tweak here and there.

 

[TC03]

Change is good. But what I see is pure crap. If I saw those icons in a potential employees portfolio, I'd keep looking.

• The radius on the corners looks like they been increased and feels awkward.
• For the gradients, it looks like someone just discovered the overlay blending mode in PS or AI. It's so harsh.
• There's not enough white space around some of them (safari, iTunes, clock, etc)
• In most cases, and especially here, I seriously hate gradients the go from dark to light.

Start over.

You're right.

Good:
Videos
Passbook
Messages

Bad:
Compass
Mail
Music
iTunes Store
App Store
Mail
Weather
Safari

 

[Jack97]

I like the icons, and I want to love them, but I feel that I can't quite. So I think the possibility of these icons changing is interesting.
I think a lot of them work, but tweaks could be made to improve them (don't even get me started on Newsstand). I think, so example, if the white was replaced with another colour on the safari icon, or the settings icon was changed to something more recognisable, it would really benefit the look of the OS as a whole. Making tweaks so the icons look less child-friendly would also be a welcome change in my opinion.

 

[canyonblue737]

Look guys... of all the things that could be wrong, the easiest to fix is icons. Literally you could change them overnight. I think Apple hit this out of the park and the more universally disliked parts of icons (Safari, some gradient issues, etc.) are very likely to be looked at and improved during the remainder of the beta. The overall concept though: brighter colors, white space, flatter but with depth from layers etc. are beautiful and a winner.

 

[Rogifan]

Except Apple has never significantly change the design during the beta period. It isn't obvious at all. If people don't like it, they should complain so that Apple hears.

Of course people should send complaints to Apple. But this article just confirms for me that the rumors of Apple struggling to get iOS finished on time are probably true. They couldn't push back WWDC so they released what they had and will improve it during the betas. Also just because they haven't done major redesigns in previous betas doesn't mean they won't this time. This is a significant UI overhaul done in a short amount of time. It's obviously a work in progress.

 

[fivedots]

Agreed. The icons will not change significantly, I feel sure. For a start, Jony did that whole video they showed in the keynote (to the world) where he talked about how wonderful the icons were - the design and the colours - and showed how they were designed. Apple aren't going to now change them beyond a tweak here and there.

They've also never significantly changed the design iOS. Assuming this beta period is parallel to previous iOS betas is naive.

 

[BSben]

this iOS is a mess.

This iOS is a Beta 1. And not everyone is as clever and gifted as you are,
you would of course come up with something much better.

 

[ladeer]

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

guys, the MarCom team designs the framework, like you saw in this picture. the "blue print" of concentric circles and distance between components, and color palette. this is MarCom's job. they set up a consistent framework and color scheme so all the app teams in apple can follow and not reinvent the wheels. the output will be a consistent and unified branding.

you can argue that, hey the colors suck. they are too bright, too pop, etc, but that is subjective opinion. the approach itself (establishing a consistent guidelines based on UI practices) is absolutely correct.

if you simply don't like the colors, i can understand. i personally like it though, because it gives a very refreshing and cheerful (spring like) atmosphere. i think this might work better in international market. remember, apple didn't design this just for the westerners. they prob did focus group w/ 100+ different designs/color palette around the world.

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

 

[canyonblue737]

Except Apple has never significantly change the design during the beta period. It isn't obvious at all. If people don't like it, they should complain so that Apple hears.

False. Half the ICONS changed between when they showed iOS 1.0 back in 2007 and when they launched the phone.

 

[cmChimera]

Look guys... of all the things that could be wrong, the easiest to fix is icons. Literally you could change them overnight. I think Apple hit this out of the park and the more universally disliked parts of icons (Safari, some gradient issues, etc.) are very likely to be looked at and improved during the remainder of the beta. The overall concept though: brighter colors, white space, flatter but with depth from layers etc. are beautiful and a winner.

Dude stop making sense.

 

[downpour]

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.

 

[Rogifan]

Agreed. The icons will not change significantly, I feel sure. For a start, Jony did that whole video they showed in the keynote (to the world) where he talked about how wonderful the icons were - the design and the colours - and showed how they were designed. Apple aren't going to now change them beyond a tweak here and there.

He talked about using the grid system for icons. Doesn't mean that that system can't produce different results. And honestly since probably 99% of iOS users probably don't even know there's new software much less what it looks like they certainly can update app icons with most people not even knowing they changed.

 

[movieator]

No wonder most of the icons look like company logos.

 

[Walter White]

Steve always kep these trigger happy idiots in line. Wtf ... Schiller adds "my ass" to his dictionary during keynote. Federighi jumbles around like he's on crack.

and now we are talking about possibility that they will be reworking these crappy icons during beta period? WTF seriously. Not the Apple i know.

Sorry to repeat this, but Steve really wouldn't have approved this. He would say "i asked for this and you've brought me a small *****".

 

[TC03]

Of course people should send complaints to Apple. But this article just confirms for me that the rumors of Apple struggling to get iOS finished on time are probably true. They couldn't push back WWDC so they released what they had and will improve it during the betas. Also just because they haven't done major redesigns in previous betas doesn't mean they won't this time. This is a significant UI overhaul done in a short amount of time. It's obviously a work in progress.

Also, it's not the true. The original iPhone shipped with slightly different icons than shown in the keynote.

And, as they said, it's the biggest change to iOS since iOS. So in retrospect, we can fully expect the icons to change.

 

[Mactendo]

Smugness. You can never have too much of it...

 

[TC03]

Steve always kep these trigger happy idiots in line. Wtf ... Schiller adds "my ass" to his dictionary during keynote. Federighi jumbles around like he's on crack.

and now we are talking about possibility that they will be reworking these crappy icons during beta period? WTF seriously. Not the Apple i know.

Sorry to repeat this, but Steve really wouldn't have approved this. He would say "i asked for this and you've brought me a small *****".

You seem to have forgotten that iOS shown in the keynote in 2007 was different than the iPhone. Examples: Safari icon (even then) and split view in Mail.

 

[dannys1]

Change is good. But what I see is pure crap. If I saw those icons in a potential employees portfolio, I'd keep looking.

• The radius on the corners looks like they been increased and feels awkward.
• For the gradients, it looks like someone just discovered the overlay blending mode in PS or AI. It's so harsh.
• There's not enough white space around some of them (safari, iTunes, clock, etc)
• In most cases, and especially here, I seriously hate gradients the go from dark to light.

Start over.

Spot on - to be honest, this isn't flat design - flat design wouldn't have all those tacky gradients in the background. Use block colours and they'll instantly look a bit better for a start off. ID go as far as to say the blending mode in PS is too kind, almost like gradients in Microsoft Word!