Re: [libreoffice-design] MimeType icons - first draft ready for discussion

Hi Jaron, hi Bernhard, all!

Am Samstag, den 11.12.2010, 17:25 -0500 schrieb Jaron Kuppers:
> Hi Bernhard,
>
> Overall, I think the icons are great!  I have a few quick comments about
> your last email and the icon set in general:

I have to second this :-) Thanks for your work during the last days to
make that possible!

Bernhard requested some feedback by the SC whether the icons can be
included in the upcoming releases (release candidates). Here is a
summary, since the SC minutes are not yet published:
      * Adding the icons to the release candidates is technically "zero
        risk". The worst case is to forget an icon, but this has to be
        identified e.g. via testing (Michael, Thorsten).
      * The icons are generally accepted; the SC is in favor of adding
        the "LibreOffice" icons than adding modified ODF icons (which
        would be an alternative). Even, if the new icons are just used
        for one or two releases.
      * Adding the icons should be done as fast as possible - further
        tweaking might be done within the next release candidate(s).
        Thus, Thorsten asked for a first set by Monday morning (if
        possible).
      * The final release is expected to be done in January - so there
        is some (but not that much) time for tweaking.

I hope I did not forget anything important, but - at least - it looks
very promising. Promising, that is a good point. A Belgian guy (to be
honest, I did not get his affiliation), told me that they do have
contact to a graphics designer who might help us with tweaking /
finalizing the icons. Thus, I proposed them to join our Design mailing
list (a warm "welcome" if you are already here ...)

Jaron, thanks for your great feedback - we share many of the question,
therefore I'd like to add some new ones.

> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 10:26 PM, Bernhard Dippold <
> bernhard@familie-dippold.at> wrote:
>
> > These iconset doesn't contain icons for
> > - Chart documents
> > - HTML documents
> - Printer Administration
> > - Installer

There might be some more - from the user's point-of-view, it would be
great to also have icons for "Open" and "Templates" with regard to a
consistent visual representation within the StartCenter. There are even
some more icons, but they fit to the grayish look we already have.
"Done", so to say ;-)

> These should probably be de-emphasized; I think these, (if they are needed)
> can be modifications of the gray gradient background of the "Math" and
> "Macros" icon set.

Yep, that was some initial idea Bernhard and I talked about - keep the
colors for the main applications and "just" use a neutral design for the
many other components and tools. I think that should work fine without
throwing to much color at the user ;-)

> *Macros Icon:
> *The icon concept is great, but the gears look a little too much like stars
> to me, especially in the larger icons.  The "axle" circle could also be
> smaller, and potentially not included in the small logo icons (I can't say
> for sure and Inkscape is currently not working for me so I can't try it
> out). 

For the 32px icons, this is emphasized by the "two gears up"
visualization - it looks like a flower (beautiful, but maybe the gear
works better in this case...).

And by the way, thanks for picking a consistent metaphor - I've seen
this in OOo before.

> [...]
> *16 bit Calc Icon:*
> Have you considered making the "squares" (that is the white space) another
> pixel larger?  I think it would look clearer.

Yes, that would make sense, I think.

And by the way, concerning the visually "unique" items here ... I'd like
to slightly adapt these with regard to the size of the icons itself.
Personally, I really don't know whether this will cause further issues,
but I tried to be a bit more detailed (and also balanced) when I made my
proposals (but please, forget about the Draw icon which looks ugly):
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/5/52/ChristophIconDraft.svg

Concerning balance, I'd like to refine some of the symbolism within the
icons. I played with it - and to me it works rater fine:
      * Writer: How about adding a picture box like in the new ODF
        icons? I did that in my proposals (see link above) and it made
        some things more clear to me. Additionally, I used one more text
        line ... the current ones in you proposal grow from line to line
        - this feels a bit unnatural to me.
      * Calc: At the moment, it sometimes looks like a window to me ;-)
        So ow about adding one more row - this also helps for larger
        icon sizes to provide more detail.
      * Impress: At the moment, the presentation content looks too
        "light" in comparison to the bold frame. How about making them a
        bit bolder? I think the line width of the current Calc item will
        work well here.
      * Draw: Works reasonable well (sorry to say, I never expected that
        people will get the idea of this symbolism). But, I don't have a
        better proposal ... the last time I tried to add some more
        "basic" shapes to better reflect the drawing capabilities, but I
        failed to come up with a really good proposal.
      * Base: Like above, how about adding one more "stack" to the
        database?
      * Masterdoc: The master documents refer to "Writer" items. Thus, I
        propose to use only "blue" items within the symbol.

> *Main application Icon:*
> For Macs, since they use vector application icons, I think a little of the
> gradient grid (the stuff in the corners of the 128px template icons) would
> look nice for the main application icon.

Well, I'd like to avoid this - this icon should really match the current
branding / document symbol. Although it might look a bit (too) neutral,
I'd like to keep this here.

> *Lastly... template vs. doc/app Icons:*
> I personally prefer the simplicity of the template icons over the brightness
> of the colors in the app/doc icons.  In my every day work I would much
> rather see the "template" icon set.  I believe that you are using the
> "white" to convey the concept of a template but perhaps there is a different
> way to express that.  Just my opinion though... perhaps others would
> disagree...

I agree here, in my original design, I tried to make the icons a bit
more subtle ... Maybe we can apply this here as well.

The thing which I do not understand are the triangle patterns. There are
only visible in the 128px versions - and thus, most of the users will
never see them. Due to it's size, the simplified versions for the
remaining icon sizes don't convey the message sufficiently (in my
opinion, because it appears to be gray shades, only).

Thus, I propose to use the (how to say that) "rip-off line" that is
currently used for the ODF icons. To me, it seems to be far easier to
understand ... also in small sized icons.

Here, it would help if all of the symbolic elements could consider some
kind of "bounding" box - so all of the symbols are within this region.
This may help to refine other regions of the icons, since a certain
region is reserved. It would also help to improve the consistency of the
icons, e.g. by making the Writer icon symbol use the same size like the
Calc icon. Does this make sense? It would also support ... wait, I think
we should add a new topic.


*Overal visual design *

The overall design could be described with "fun", integrating some of
the branding style characteristics. At least, this is my
understanding ... it would be great if you (all) could help me to find
some description for that.

Well, I think that the filters which are currently applied (causing the
"inner shadows within the borders of the icons") don't work that well
for the icons (the emboss effect and the plain large scale symbols with
the bright "background shadow"). Do you think the filter effects could
be reduced, or even removed?

What also puzzles me, is how the icons look on different backgrounds -
have you tried that?

Another thing that makes me a bit clueless is the use of the additional
border lines (for the light symbol background) within the 32px icons -
it doesn't appear in the other ones.

Finally, the pixel perfect representation can be improved ... but this
is something that can be done in the further refinement process. But now
I really hope that at least some of the feedback is somehow helpful. I
feel a bit bad to not provide any proposal, but I (still) have to
prepare personal things ... in the best case, I try to come up with one
proposal this late evening. Let's see...

Bernhard, Jaron, all! Thanks for your help and support for LibO - it's
great to see things moving on :-)

Cheers,
Christoph


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