well, this is also true:
So afterall, easy to adapt and mantain, but not so easy to create
well, this is also true:
So afterall, easy to adapt and mantain, but not so easy to create
Many of your posts are negative and highly disrupting. It would be so nice to read constructive and supportive messages from you.
Whether you like it or not, the decision-making process in designing is funded on several levels. In short, the final shape of the work is limited by:
Time and resources are unbeatable and usually define the final shape of the project. The fact that something is done as voluntary work does not mean that time and resources are unlimited. It is just the opposite.
Practical issues in the second place affect the adopted solutions. The old set of colored icons is a great example of how a high degree of complexity affects adaptability and development opportunities.
Functional issues are extremely important but indirectly result from all of the above. Ergonomically perfect solutions do not go hand in hand with the limited availability of resources for the purpose. You get what you pay for. Well-balanced decisions are usually in the middle and are based on compromises. Good assumptions allow adaptation and development of the project, so as to minimize functional deficiencies.
Aesthetics are the least important and individual matter. The boundary conditions defining the appearance should be clearly defined by the client, and if they are not, the designer has a free hand. De gustibus non est disputandum.
Then the answer is to just use text everywhere. Text is fast, easy and cheap to create, always looks good, and can be differentiated much more easily than mono icons.
Nope. It seems You donāt get it.
You can easily proove that Iām wrong. All You have to do to proove that time and money doesnāt count and ergonomics are in first place is to pick up the old icon set and make it up to date. Easy-peasy.
Which criterion does it not meet?
I never said you were wrong. Just that text meets all your criteria perfectly.
No it doesnt. The goal was to create set of icons, not text labels. Keep it in mind reading my post.
I believe the goal is to create a functional UI.
No. I do not design the GUI. I design icons and this thread is about icons. Nothing more, nothing less.
The question of how icons are used in the interface is a separate matter.
Thatās a cop-out. Your icon work affects the UI whether you like it or not.
Yep, and I did my best, but - Iāll repeat - the way icons are used in the interface is a separate matter. I mean thechnical issues. When I started the project, the plan was to make all icons themeable vector/meshes, just as Toolbar icons are made. My design was developed with such a possibility in perspective. Devs sticked with bitmaps for now for some reason. Human resources, I guessā¦
I just canāt believe how much debate a set of icons can stir up
I just want to mention that I absolutely love the new icons! I like how clean and stylish the UI looks now. Though Iām sure a colored set will come at some point, as thereās so much demand for it.
Then the answer is to just use text everywhere
I think youāre just trying to poke holes in jendrzychās argument for the sake of it, but no, text-only UI would be a ton more cluttered, or contain much less info. Of course thereās a need for icons. And it doesnāt meet the criteria no.1-2 for example: aesthetic issues and functional reasons. Itās just that much more efficient to display certain kinds of information in a small icon, rather than a word.
cāmon, whatās with this thread all of a suddenā¦ screaming and kicking about the icons is not making anything betterā¦ The icons are not bad, a lot of time and thought has gone into the work already, and they do not look confusing or is difficult to tell apart at allā¦ In the end it seems more like it is subjective preference that controls this thread rather than being objective about itā¦ I canāt really help it, but i really -LIKE- the new icons. Subjectively speaking, they are not making blender harder to use for me at allā¦ Itās like the whole shortcut business as wellā¦ Itās not a problem. Work with it for a while, and everything will fall into place eventually. New people have little to compare with, so theyāll also have to work with what they get. And developers working with blender are not working hard to make it worse than what it was, they work hard to make it betterā¦ And in the case of the icons, they are not going backwards.
@jendrzych I honestly think youāre doing a great job, donāt let the ranting get to youā¦
Soā¦ yes? If I read that correctly?
As far as the wider trend goes, theyāre adopted widely because they are cheap. Also @lsscpp has a point, so Iāll rephrase to āTheyāre easier to iterate onā.
This has obviously been a huge plus for you and updating the icon sets, fixing outdated icons, adding new ones, sorting out inconsistencies etc. This is indeed a good thing.
That doesnāt mean that itās not a largely negative result for the end user on the readability/differentiation front though.
For blender, in the end, whether or not anyone has the resources to address that is a separate issue. Though interestingly, perhaps frustratingly, as you mentioned if any application has reason to use mono-colour icons itād be community driven ones, given their budget. Itās a shame so many pieces of commercial software cut the corner to save a buck.
I was only intending to talk about the general trend.
I try and be constructive.
I intended to untangle your nest of designer-talk into a root statement that summed up your post, so people could see your point without the fluff, because you made it sound like much more than it was.
Iād rather be real, than supportive without a reason, Iām not here to hug it out with everyone.
Getting away from the trend and back to blender and this thread,
I do feel the need to say that myself, and hopefully some of the others who are saying mono-colour icons are worse than coloured/outlined/shaded icons, are not dismissing the work @jendrzych has done. Indeed thank you @jendrzych for doing a ton of work fixing all of the things I mentioned and Iām sure more with the icons.
If people want to continue arguing whether or not mono icons are better, thereās another thread for that and I would hope it can move over there.
As far as the development of icons goes for blender, the way I see it the point has been made, the only progress on coloured+ icons to be made is finding resources/time/people, which should also probably have another thread, or be in the other thread.
@jendrzych is there permission for someone to try and add colour and/or shading to your icons? what kind of license is the sheet under?
Letās cut the discussion - Iād love to get some colour, but I donāt think itās best time to put an effort now, ainly because shapes are still WIP.
Iāll say it again: when I started the project, the plan was to make all icons themeable vector/meshes, just as Toolbar icons are made. My design was developed with such a possibility in perspective. Devs sticked with bitmaps for now for some reason. Human resources, I guessā¦ But in the future, bitmap icons may turn into Blenderās meshes, which will affect the way colour can be used.
Regarding licencing - it will be released under GPL.
Great job on the icons man, I think they are nice but also worked just fine for me on some recent projectsā¦ it took a couple of days, but I feel at home with them now. Also I like all the fixes and little improvements youāve been doing to the set, even those I could not test yet. Toolbar icons feels a bit odd now, maybe too much color there? thanks again!
Just to repeat what has been said earlier: Icon colors are now handled by the code and by the theme. The icons themselves should not include colors baked in, then we cannot theme them and we cannot ensure that they work on various backgrounds.
We can add more different color categories, but that should be done in code, not as part of the icon set.
The icons already have color in some places. The Outliner uses this.
The toolbar icons also have colors that are (theoretically) themable, although support for this has to be added in the code and UI.
Cheers.
Subjectively liking the icons doesnāt factor into it. Theyāre lovely, for what itās worth.
As has been suggested, Iāve stayed away from this discussion and given it several weeks of time to factor out getting used to them, but no, it still takes me up to 5 seconds to locate the right one in a group, which is only about 20% faster than when I started out. Previously, as well as in Blender 2.49 (where almost everything was text-based) it was closer to 0.5 seconds.
I do not dislike the new icons because theyāre ugly. I fucking hate them because they objectively make me slow as molasses.
Which icons specifically are slowing you down?