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

Here's a good litmus test...

If a third party app used an icon like half the new ones we've seen in iOS 7 so far, would you be inspired to buy it or even think it looked good?

For instance, the new reminders app icon is just dreadful, in my opinion.
 
I hope they keep the colourful look... I love colourfulness in an OS and iOS is very colourful. Maybe I love it cus I'm a girl and girls love colourful stuff.

But some icons need to change. Safari and Calendar are simply AWFUL.
 
When they say change before release probably due to the reaction to the colours and whites.

Even with a new skin colour it's still Android like.
 
I have no doubt that feedback about the icons has gone up to the highest levels at Apple. There's a good possibility things will change. Doing a re-design of this magnitude in 6 months is definitely going to result in a work in progress. The rumors were out there that iOS was behind schedule. So it's very possible they rushed to get something out they could demo and its still in a state of flux.
 
Explains a lot...now everything makes sense. This is why the icons look like were made by a five year old...

I do apreciate the new trasnparency, borrowed from Windows Vista/7's Aeros, but couldnt they simply add this? Its impossible to dial a number with the new keypad.

This also makes me wonder who decided to trash can the Mac Pro.
 
xcodeaddict said:
Those who like it are silent and happy, for the most part. Those who don't are far from silent.

If you like it, brill - if you don't, ah well - you'll live :)
Click to expand...

Those saying that putting hardware device designer in charge of software design is probably a bad idea probably were right. Just because both things have word 'design' in it doesn't mean one has ability, skills and experience to do both .
 
Function and Form is being knee-capped by style in many areas of this beta.

The feel and use is high bar. The asinine beta icons like Safari rightfully deserved criticism.

Not to mention the `everything is the white album' need to be addressed.
 
Rogifan said:
I have no doubt that feedback about the icons has gone up to the highest levels at Apple. There's a good possibility things will change. Doing a re-design of this magnitude in 6 months is definitely going to result in a work in progress. The rumors were out there that iOS was behind schedule. So it's very possible they rushed to get something out they could demo and its still in a state of flux.
Click to expand...

I just wonder why they didn't add features first with the current skin then re-vamp it. You're right though, it's a lot in a short time however maybe iOS 7 should have been features with a transition to removing textures and then iOS 8 being more features and completing the change.

It's just hard to think something as 'personal' to Apple as design would have not been done by Apple.
 
Walter White said:
Those saying that putting hardware device designer in charge of software design is probably a bad idea probably were right. Just because both things have word 'design' in it doesn't mean one has ability, skills and experience to do both .
Click to expand...

I was one of those saying Jony should stick to industrial design and trust a top team to collaborate with his industrial team so that the software is as high quality as the hardware.
 
alvindarkness said:
iClarified has this comparison between iOS6 and iOS7.

Image

I think overall the new icons are cleaner and generally look better. But as others have said the sharp gradients, weird radius on the outline edges, and few other tidbits need to be refined a bit as some icons really look out of place.

I'm thinking they have this great new compass icon, while the safari icon looks very out of place (infact the two simple triangles barely resemble a compass at all now). No reason they cant combine some of the elements of the new compass into the safari icon to keep things consistent. Just a thought.
Click to expand...

thanks for putting that. it clearly shows that apple has done a great job to make things intuitive and consistent.

for example, stock and weather apps used to look very similar, and are usually consumed by customers at the same time (wake up in the morning). hence, there is potential for confusion. by separating their colors (changing stock from blue to black), it will speed up a person's time finding the respective app in the morning.

app store (blue) and weather (blue) do not confuse with each other, since u don't use them at the same time.

compass and stock also don't confuse, since you don't use them at the same time.

after this rule, second rule is that apple tries to keep the color same as old, so you will not get lost. (we are used to find something orange when look for music, something greenish blue when we look for video, and something pinkish purple when we look for itune. in the same way, those are maintained.

third rule, they got rid of a lot of inconsistent/odd flares like the starburst behind itune, the four ugly squares on game center, the complex graphics on newstand, photo, and safari, and simply flatten the colors into a few layers. (safari and photo all had a lot more colors to give a painting look). now, they are flattened. newstand used to show all its contents which would look kind of busy in such a small icon. now it's a pretty stash.

rule four, they organize similar things by color. mail and safari have always been blue. but they also changed colors so all the instant communication apps are green: facetime, message, and phone.

lastly, i also like how they moved the weather from "sun with a number" to "partly cloudy." the old icon doesn't convey it's weather as clearly as the second, almost universal icon. (if u look from far away, the old icon could be a yellow dot on a blue background w/ a number below. it could mean a lot of things. but the partly cloudy hiding the sun is 100% weather.)
 
FirstNTenderbit said:
MarCom should have been concentrating on putting out... you know... effective marketing and communications. Not this. Sort of reminds me of the color palette from Old Navy's spring collection.:eek:

The wife loves it. Me, not so much. To each his own.

Seems as if Ive put MarCom's head (figuratively) right under the bus wheel. At least we know things could change in the near future.
Click to expand...

Do you think that marcoms makes these decisions unilaterally? You give them entirely too much authority and power in a company if you do. They do nothing without the direction from, and sign off of, every other department head in the company. You also realise that marcoms doesn't actually design these icons, that they hire in expert artists and design agencies who specialise in this work, right? Do you even understand the process involved?

Rogifan said:
How so? There wasn't anything in the article that trashed the marketing team.
Click to expand...

No, but a bunch of engineers and techie people can easily imagine something that isn't, especially when they haven't been involved in the decision.

Seems to me a lot of people here are commenting on things about which they know absolutely and utterly nothing. They just know that "marcoms is where you get brochures."
 
Well at least we have an explanation. They must have really been in a rush to just let "beta" icons be released. This is part of a lot of their marketing so one would think they would make sure they get them right early on.
 
mdriftmeyer said:
I was one of those saying Jony should stick to industrial design and trust a top team to collaborate with his industrial team so that the software is as high quality as the hardware.
Click to expand...

So you think Greg Christie and his team had nothing to do with this? Or just did whatever Jony told them to?
 
iOS 7's features are great. The fluidity of the UI, including the transparency and paralaxing, is great. But the icon design and textures (specifically, the vast lacking thereof), give the OS a sterile and very amateur appearance. It's too flat. It doesn't invite me to touch it or interact with. It makes me want to quit looking at it. It could have been flat without being cheap, but it's not.
 
thefredelement said:
I just wonder why they didn't add features first with the current skin then re-vamp it. You're right though, it's a lot in a short time however maybe iOS 7 should have been features with a transition to removing textures and then iOS 8 being more features and completing the change.

It's just hard to think something as 'personal' to Apple as design would have not been done by Apple.
Click to expand...

I'm convinced Apple felt another year with the iOS 6 UI would be disaster. Or Jony and Craig hated it so much they couldn't wait to get rid of it. There's nothing that says they can't do point releases after it goes live. One rumor was Ive wanted to do a major overhaul of the calendar app but it probably wouldn't make it in for iOS 7. But why does that have to wait a whole year to get updated? Why can't they do point releases for things they couldn't finish in time?
 
VERY interesting. To save the design and engineering some time under the tight deadlines perhaps? Or possibly to come up with something of a decoy so the final look wouldn't be revealed early? Either way, letting marketing handle anything design related is 99% of the time, a bad, bad thing. This instance is obviously no exception.
 
MacRumors said:
[url=http://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]
Click to expand...

Hmm, some of these background colors look dirty to me.

shared_controlcenter_lastframe_2x.jpg
shared_notificationcenter_lastframe_2x.jpg
 
Ok, let's do a quick and simple design usability test.


You need to open music app on your iOS 7 device, find a song with artwork and play it. Now lock the screen and wake it by pressing home button, double-click home button for music controls.

Question: WTF is that?
 
Oh cool Jonny will save us from ios6 stuff, omg ios7 looks terrible, but its ok some random marketing crew did it and its a work in progress, nothing to see here, Jonny did save us after all...

I kinda like most of them...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Back
Top