Apples rant and praise thread

[apple]

After more than 18 years using the same iconic style for the office suit Microsoft has decided to change them altogether following the path of Adobe.
The new icons will consist of a uppercase version of the first letter from the program name.
An W for Word, a P for PowerPoint.
This is more or less a straight copy from Adobes CS3/CS4 suit's Ps for Photoshop, ID for Indesign etc. etc.



What the designer at Redmond seems to forget is colour-blind persons that will have to struggle when they are to open PowerPoint.
Microsoft Project 2010, PowerPoint and Publisher all uses the uppercase P for it's icon.



Microsofts responded when asked why this change;

"The new icon designs respond to research that informs us that users can more easily associate icons by letter and color than by abstract design.
We’ve adopted an alphabet system to bring a more uniform approach to the wide variety of Office family products.”

I let you decide whenever these new icons are an improvement, meanwhile I keep sticking to apple's iWork suit.




Office 4.3



Office 95



97



Office for Mac 2004 and 2008



Office 2007

[Maяcel]

well if they end up using these i know ill change mine back to the 07 ones. what are they thinking?! how the hell can i associate one letter with an icon if they have the bloody same letter?!

[apple]

Exactly my point.
And as I said just think about those who are colour blind.

[Raglan]

well its easy enough to change or make new icons, i can say without a doubt that i will quickly change to either my own made ones, or the older microsoft ones.

Though i do have some sympahty for microsoft, no-one ever seems to like it when they change things

[apple]

I like there new look in Windows 7. A huge steep up from Xp. It's just that they seems to decide to go the wrong way far to often.
If you ask me, an icon shouldn't need to be changed. If a user need to do that then there is major flaws with the design.

[Raglan]

i don't know what they look like in windows 7, but definatly agree, if they need to change there is something wrong with the design. There is nothing wrong with modernising (after all 97 looks seriously dated now) but they should keep the basic concept that has made office the widest used package on the planet.

[apple]

Yeah, don't just change because you can, change because you must. That is something Microsoft has to learn.

[Raglan]

biggest reason i like apple, never owned one, but it provides competition to microsoft and forces them to up their game

[abbews]

Not to talk about how good Mac is with Ps.. ARRGHH! GIVE ME MONEY!

[Raglan]

Ps?

[abbews]

Photoshop

[apple]

Photoshop.

For me the greatest thing with Mac OS X is that everything is graphically appealing and uncluttered.
It's make it so much easier to concentrate on the things that really matters.
For me a OS should be invisible. You shouldn't have to thing about it's existence. It should just work.

Btw. moderators is it ok if I remake this thread to "apples rant and praise thread" where I could post stuff connected to the graphic world and tell my thoughts about it.

[abbews]

I don't see why you couldn't? And yeah, I BEAT YOU TO IT!

[apple]

Damn you.
One of many graphic idols that I got is Mike Kus. If you got time take a look at this Keynote he held at Future of Web Design London last april.

He named his presentation "Graphic Design: The Forgotten Web Standard", which is something that is sadly to true.



http://www.vcasmo.com/video/carsonified/4927


Here is a video that he made, showing how he put together his slides. It's really cool!
http://vimeo.com/4494324

Here is the slides.
http://www.slideshare.net/mikekus/gr...n-web-standard

[abbews]

OMG! He has Spotify! And he wasn't so bad with Typography either

[apple]

He is pure awesome. He's creations looks so simple but they are rather advanced and Abbs, of course he's good with Typography, I wouldn't recommend him otherwise, would I?

[Subuatai de Bodemloze]

Apple did you purchase the Helivica (sp) font set? It's like 80$ or something silly like that. Or do you use a cloned version?

[Maяcel]

it comes free with a mac
edit; its also on the iphone, hopefully i can find it and put it on my pc, or do they use a different file type?

[Subuatai de Bodemloze]

oh how nice...

[abbews]

It's on the Iphone!? WHERE!?