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A flat icon set for OS X

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Re: A flat icon set for OS X

#41

Post by msutherl »

jarrett wrote: post #20

Philosophically or practically: What's the justification for nearly everyone switching to flat design? Is there any articulable reason it's "better" than the rich, three-dimensional style[1] that was previously popular? Or is it just an arbitrary trend? Some say the change is driven by high-DPI displays. I disagree. I don't see any intrinsic reason that flat designs look better than rich, three-dimensional designs on…

Flat design is successful because it's a system that allows unskilled designers to produce acceptable results.

Re: A flat icon set for OS X

#42

Post by zephjc »

jarrett wrote: post #20

Philosophically or practically: What's the justification for nearly everyone switching to flat design? Is there any articulable reason it's "better" than the rich, three-dimensional style[1] that was previously popular? Or is it just an arbitrary trend? Some say the change is driven by high-DPI displays. I disagree. I don't see any intrinsic reason that flat designs look better than rich, three-dimensional designs on…

Since the Aqua look came out in OS X, there have been a lot of imitations used on webpages, knock-off UIs, etc. which tended to look terrible, in part because it's hard to do them tastefully. At least flat UIs are harder to mess up.

Personally, I really liked the modified Platinum UI from MacOS X DR2 code named Rhapsody, though it could have used some polish: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/rhapsodydr2

Re: A flat icon set for OS X

#43

Post by abhinavk »

Vanayad wrote: post #38

I do not understand this trend of 'flat design'. It looks horrible. It started with Apple and the other copied it. Now microsoft has it, google started implementing it, samsung as well. It looks horrible.

Well. Microsoft had it first with Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. But yes it is now everywhere. Latest KDE Plasma release is flat too and other DEs will soon follow suit.

Re: A flat icon set for OS X

#45

Post by zephjc »

flohofwoe wrote: post #33
jarrett wrote: post #20

Philosophically or practically: What's the justification for nearly everyone switching to flat design? Is there any articulable reason it's "better" than the rich, three-dimensional style[1] that was previously popular? Or is it just an arbitrary trend? Some say the change is driven by high-DPI displays. I disagree. I don't see any intrinsic reason that flat designs look better than rich, three-dimensional designs on…

Frankly, I don't care about the look of the icons (these should be theme-able anyway), but I do care a lot about the actual application user interface, and for this, flat design is a step back into the 80's. Flat design is good as long as there are no important visual cues lost what elements can be interacted with and which are just passively displaying information. I really do still have problems in iOS7 to separate…

It's not a jump back to the 80s exactly. For example, here is an old NT screenshot: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/Windows_NT_3.1...

A lot of it is flat, but they use simple bevels for buttons and other clickable elements, and its reuse on, for example, the buttons in the file manager window, looks tacky because it appears cluttered and overused. Also, excessive lines (e.g. for the window borders), high contrast colors, and small color pallet makes the overall appearance not nice to look at. Also the icon set suuuuucked.

Re: A flat icon set for OS X

#46

Post by [deleted] »

flohofwoe wrote: post #33
jarrett wrote: post #20

Philosophically or practically: What's the justification for nearly everyone switching to flat design? Is there any articulable reason it's "better" than the rich, three-dimensional style[1] that was previously popular? Or is it just an arbitrary trend? Some say the change is driven by high-DPI displays. I disagree. I don't see any intrinsic reason that flat designs look better than rich, three-dimensional designs on…

Frankly, I don't care about the look of the icons (these should be theme-able anyway), but I do care a lot about the actual application user interface, and for this, flat design is a step back into the 80's. Flat design is good as long as there are no important visual cues lost what elements can be interacted with and which are just passively displaying information. I really do still have problems in iOS7 to separate…

[deleted]

Re: A flat icon set for OS X

#47

Post by jason_slack »

abhinavk wrote: post #44
jason_slack wrote: post #17

Thanks for releasing these. I am changing over now! Hoping my dock and icons flow better. Here is my new dock: http://imgur.com/2vEM5Yv Why the down vote?

1. You complained about the downvote. 2. Image is low-resolution.

so I got downvoted for taking a picture of my exact dock, exact size? So I should have made my dock way larger and posted a better quality picture?

All I was doing was telling the author that I liked what she did and showing that I did indeed take time to implement it.

Re: A flat icon set for OS X

#48

Post by tinalatif »

jason_slack wrote: post #47
abhinavk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You complained about the downvote. 2. Image is low-resolution.

so I got downvoted for taking a picture of my exact dock, exact size? So I should have made my dock way larger and posted a better quality picture? All I was doing was telling the author that I liked what she did and showing that I did indeed take time to implement it.

For what it's worth, I appreciate it :)

Re: A flat icon set for OS X

#49

Post by jarrett »

zephjc wrote: post #42
jarrett wrote: post #20

Philosophically or practically: What's the justification for nearly everyone switching to flat design? Is there any articulable reason it's "better" than the rich, three-dimensional style[1] that was previously popular? Or is it just an arbitrary trend? Some say the change is driven by high-DPI displays. I disagree. I don't see any intrinsic reason that flat designs look better than rich, three-dimensional designs on…

Since the Aqua look came out in OS X, there have been a lot of imitations used on webpages, knock-off UIs, etc. which tended to look terrible, in part because it's hard to do them tastefully. At least flat UIs are harder to mess up. Personally, I really liked the modified Platinum UI from MacOS X DR2 code named Rhapsody, though it could have used some polish: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/rhapsodydr2

> I really liked the modified Platinum UI from MacOS X DR2 code named Rhapsody, though it could have used some polish

Interesting. I feel like the current OS X UI is just that: Rhapsody with a lot of polish. The core concept seems to be the same.

Re: A flat icon set for OS X

#50

Post by flohofwoe »

zephjc wrote: post #45
flohofwoe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I don't care about the look of the icons (these should be theme-able anyway), but I do care a lot about the actual application user interface, and for this, flat design is a step back into the 80's. Flat design is good as long as there are no important visual cues lost what elements can be interacted with and which are just passively displaying information. I really do still have problems in iOS7 to separate…

It's not a jump back to the 80s exactly. For example, here is an old NT screenshot: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/Windows_NT_3.1... A lot of it is flat, but they use simple bevels for buttons and other clickable elements, and its reuse on, for example, the buttons in the file manager window, looks tacky because it appears cluttered and overused. Also, excessive lines (e.g. for the window borders), hig…

The Windows 3.x UI was always ugly and didn't make any sense ;) But that's the 90's, I'm talking about the 80's.

For instance: AmigaOS 1.3 (notice in the bottom-most screenshot how the buttons don't have '3D edges':

http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga1.html

'3D' UI elements were introduced later in AmigaOS2.0, and I remember how the user interface style guide made a big fuzz about how UI elements that appear raised are supposed to be clickable while flat or recessed elements shall be used for non-interactive or disabled UI elements which cannot be interacted with.

Actually this site is a pretty awesome collection of operating system UIs. BeOS still looks nice, almost like retro-modern pixel-art.

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