Hard to identify icons in the stroke panel

[amyas]

This set of icons in the stroke panel is quite hard to identify, compares to version 1.0. I know it will break UI consistency if you kept the v1.0 icons here, but these are a bit confusing.

[GarryP]

In what way are the new icons “hard to identify” and/or “confusing”?

[amyas]

V1 used blue lines and dots to indicate the border, so you can easily identify the border itself and its silhouette. V2's monochrome icons are difficult to distinguish the differences.

[GarryP]

Thanks for clarifying.

Would I be correct in saying that the only change you want is to have the blue lines and dots reinstated?

I only ask as, to me, the icons seem to be smaller/less-defined than they were in V1, maybe because of the ‘anti-aliasing’, and that makes them a little bit more difficult to see.

The buttons are slightly larger but the icons inside the buttons look slightly smaller.

See attached image – V2 on left, V1 on right.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the first person to point this out - screen-grab from Windows 10.

[amyas]

Yeah, hopefully we can get the colorful icons back.

[deeds]

2 hours ago, amyas said:

This set of icons in the stroke panel is quite hard to identify, compares to version 1.0. I know it will break UI consistency if you kept the v1.0 icons here, but these are a bit confusing.

It's highly unlikely this was designed by a designer with any formal training and/or significant experience and/or user empathy.

- Enormous amounts of space is wasted.

- The top row misses out on utilising an enormous opportunity for comparative demonstration of their differences... making them vertical would show their relative positions compared to each other. This is an astonishing miss.

- There's excess information in the second row, in that the inside corner doesn't need to be shown and the inner line could be removed, arguably, too. This would greatly break up the three rows, in and of itself, by making one row entirely single lines.

- Weight is not used in the 3rd row, where it could and should be used. 

- That colour is not used is completely befuddling. 

- The orientation of the corners in the second two rows is odd. There were several better options. The only one worse than this might have been having them being the same. 

Affinity, hire a very good designer from the past to head hunt a good UI designer for you.  Affinity is clearly not able to ascertain shit from clay when it comes to designers. icon design is a serious art form, and this is icon design for designers doing design. Your users deserve more respect.

 

And we don't need : after each Label:

[loukash]

10 hours ago, GarryP said:

The buttons are slightly larger but the icons inside the buttons look slightly smaller.

It's simply utterly bad icon design. 
When designing icons for screen, you must consider potential antialiasing and align 1px lines to the pixel grid. Not every computer has a retina display yet. (Definitely not my mid-2012 MacBook Pro.) Pixel perfect GUI design matters!

Heck, in this thread we're just discussing exactly those pixel-perfect design issues and all the workarounds necessary when working in Affinity. What an irony.  

[François R]

First beta improves this:

[A_B_C]

Indeed, that’s better. 🙂

[François R]

If you look at the real life experience with monocrome icons, it's clear why the new icons are far superior to the old ones from v1 and the first ones from v2.0.0.

 ->  -> 

I don't think the join icon is good though, the medium grey area within the stroke stands out from the others and doesn't make much sense in context. I would recommend Serif to have the three rows of icons designed uniformly. But at least I can identify them now. 

I reckon Serif Software learned something about usability from Adobe the hard way - and soon might have a few non-developer job postings ready on their website.

Adobe Illustrator:

 

Adobe Illustrator light and dark, bigger:

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