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The new publisher icon is not great


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I love Affinity Designer and Photo and I use them on Mac and Windows alike. The current icons fit both OSes very well. But the new, blocks Publisher icon just does not fit them and does not look good in general. I would much prefer an icon in the style of the other two apps.

Cheers,
Benedikt

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As a mac user, I find the old icons really offsetting. They look as if they were designed for a space invader game. I can't see any motivation for most of the details except style (and outdated style at that) which is really the worst kind of design method imho. The new ones pick up this legacy, but they are much cleaner and thus more professional looking, so definitely progress imho!

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I'm also a Mac user and I find the new icons rather flat and bland... and it is actually a violation of the Human Interface Guidelines:

 

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/icons-and-images/app-icon/

the macOS icon shouldn’t use the same rounded rectangle shape that the iOS icon uses

 

In a way I'd kind of like to see Apple actually enforce that rule so that Serif needs to fix this before it can be updated on the app store...  of course there are other apps that might be in trouble then too...  :9_innocent:

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12 minutes ago, fde101 said:

I find the new icons rather flat and bland... and it is actually a violation of the Human Interface Guidelines

Yes, the new icons are rather flat and bland, but the desktop icons I’ve seen have relatively sharp corners.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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I have to agree. All those shapes protruding from the triangles. What was their purpose? I get the idea of the “A” in the (equilateral?) triangle, as well as the idea of the three apps tightly integrated, but there there so many odd elements in the old icons that these two ideas get lost almost entirely. To me, the old icons always looked like a makeshift solution, and I am happy that they are gone. Well, as happy one can get by such a change … ;)

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Actually, now that the square kids have developed some personality with their 3-D shapes, they look rather sturdy on my dock.   Beginning to not mind them at all, except that perhaps the Publisher icon colors might be a wee bit more compatible with the other two, rather than with mustard and catsup.    Oh well.   The apps are actually what matters and they are FIRST RATE!!   


24" iMAC Apple M1 chip, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16 GB unified memory, 1 TB SSD storage, Ventura 13.6.  Photo, Publisher, Designer 1.10.5, and 2.3.
MacBook Pro 13" 2020, Apple M1 chip, 16GB unified memory, 256GB  SSD storage
,  Ventura 13.6.   Publisher, Photo, Designer 1.10.5, and 2.1.1.  
 iPad Pro 12.9 2020 (4th Gen. IOS 16.6.1); Apple pencil.  
Wired and bluetooth mice and keyboards.9_9

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1 hour ago, jmwellborn said:

Actually, now that the square kids have developed some personality with their 3-D shapes, they look rather sturdy on my dock.   Beginning to not mind them at all, except that perhaps the Publisher icon colors might be a wee bit more compatible with the other two, rather than with mustard and catsup.    Oh well.   The apps are actually what matters and they are FIRST RATE!!   

Wasn't there some boy band named "The Square Kids on my Dock"?

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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1 hour ago, rbsund said:

What were you referring to as "shock"?

Especially to those line endings:

On 5/26/2019 at 8:26 PM, jmwellborn said:

Actually, now that the square kids have developed some personality with their 3-D shapes, they look rather sturdy on my dock.  

On 5/26/2019 at 9:56 PM, Old Bruce said:

"The Square Kids on my Dock"?

Furthermore the PDF might "shock" the discussion because it illustrates the flexibility that is almost arbitrary when it comes to reasons for or against an icon design. There is not much rational to consider, such as the degree of symmetry and simplicity. Style, colors, number of strokes, straight or curved, 3D or flatness, blurry or sharp, etc. ... are more a matter of taste and temporary fashion than a really sensible topic that can be judged reasonable as right and wrong (or not great).

 

macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1

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On 5/27/2019 at 1:28 PM, fde101 said:

They add character.

Well, I see that my comment was a bit of a harsh statement. At least, the triangles with the “protruding” shapes are still the official logo of the Affinity line-up. But in a way, I think the very first icons of the Affinity Suite represented the idea behind the application suite better than the intermediate ones that are now superseded by the most recent ones. The very first ones had other issues, for sure, and I fear they would look pretty outdated today. 

But apart from that, I still wonder whether or not icon details should have some semantic content besides just “adding character.” Or maybe I don’t understand what you mean by that phrase. Hmm. :)

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