I feel sorry for whoever is having to design the icon sets for 2.8 and make decisions on the icons if they are reading this thread - there are some decent suggestions scattered, but tons of absolutely terrible “too many cooks” ideas floating around too. Whoever has been implementing these so far has been doing a pretty good job, I think they should continue on their path.
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Only the ones that are really needed ofc. Just think, why on earth the icons colors are controlled by the text colors?
Makes no sense.
Understood. I’ll need to look into how we add variables to the theme then, as that’s the container this will need to come from.
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Is that a mockup. I haven’t been keeping up with Unreal lately but if that’s what it looks like now what a drastic change in just a few months.
Edit: Nevermind just read the attached thread link. It looks really nice tho.
This is the first time I heard this. If you could give a link to back that up.
(and since you can choose to show everything automatically as expert view - then isn’t that like reversing ‘UI modes’ so it doesn’t exist ?)
This is what I like about Blender. That’s pretty cool you are willing to allow somebody to do this. I’m not a fan of monochrome like photoshop etc are doing, but I’ll get use to it I’m sure. I do like the color coding idea for specific items etc…
But the real reason I’m replying…Funny story… 
I’ve used Maya since the 90’s (Just switched to Blender 1.5 years ago). Back in the day, a coworker always talked about how much he hated Anne of Green Gables. So I made a set of Anne of Green Gables themed icons quickly and swapped out his Maya icons with this set.
Maya’s icons weren’t obvious to get to so he had them on his computer the rest of the time he worked there. He got use to what icon corresponded to which function and continued to use Maya this way. Hahaha
This will open up so many possibilities now… 
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“It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
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Hahahahaha
Awesome
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I’m not sure if the proposal is just to customize the colors, or also so that designers can share icon sets and users can install them without having to compile and build Blender.
It would be ideal if Themes and icons could be shared separately, so users can mix different themes and icons. Then as an extra, of course if the user could also configure their own colors and tones it would be well come. But in general, users never do that, they simply rely on the good sense of good designers and they just use their designs.
In any case, @BTolputt, thanks for the effort! 
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You have to click the heart on the heart locker icon!
Yeah? Well I still don’t like asparagus.
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Tbh, I’d drop all this customization panic and stick with just a nice standard colored icons sheet png. 
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I’m going to work on the “users can install/use icons without having to compile and build Blender” functionality.
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Now I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, more thinking out loud. But is it possible that doing so could result in a lessening of options?
What I mean is that if this functionality is primarily designed for end-users to easily swap out icon sprite sheets, then those might need to be easy to make. So all colors just simply embedded in the PNG. It might be asking too much to require that different classes of icon part be assigned to one of three color channels, for example.
That would mean that basically every theme would need a different icon file. And that file might have to have all of those 500 icons played with in order to get the effect needed for that theme. So it might be asking a lot of work for the theme creators.
On the other hand it is quite possible that the very next step in this process for this new icon set is to alter it and the icon-drawing code so that each icon can support more than one color and those colors can be easily overridden by the theme. That way the one icon file can be used for almost any theme, whether you want white icons, mono icons, or multi-colored icons.
The difference between the unreal UI and Blender is that Blender has far more icons and the Unreal icons are much bigger.
Color is important because if they are all the same color, the brain has to decode each shape as it cannot make a quick scan based on color and basic shape.
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I understand your feelings on this. I personally would prefer your layered / colour-coded solution and then allowing for the icons to be drawn with theme-specified colours at runtime.
Thing is, brecht has stated that he is willing to accept a custom icon sheet patch - not a layered solution patch. You’ve been around long enough to know there is only so far I/we can push feature changes and so I take what I can get.
FWIW, whilst an extra fiddly step, a “base” icon-set image with your colour-coding could be still made and then a split/multiply/merge action of some form applied in a graphics app to get what you want “pre-baked”. Yes, not as good or end-user configurable as your initial suggestion but, again, brecht has laid down the rules of what he’ll accept - we have to work within those confines to get what we want.
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I guess we can have icon-loading as you’ve suggested and just always assume that the PNG is a regular, normal, easy-to-make one with colors baked in. And then some day later add a setting to the theme that specifies that the file used is regular or “layered”. Draw the icons differently if the file is layered. So I guess I’ll take back any of my worry…
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The safe might be clearer in terms of meaning, but I didn’t read it as a safe at first, it looks more like an icon for face inset, and you’re right, there’s too much detail. I’d go with the shields, those icons work much better.
This should be on this thread topic, at least for those who don’t like current icons 
Sure, but that blade cuts both ways.
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