[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #23333: New icons

WordPress Trac noreply at wordpress.org
Thu Feb 7 18:31:22 UTC 2013


#23333: New icons
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 Reporter:  empireoflight   |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement     |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |   Milestone:  3.6
Component:  Administration  |     Version:
 Severity:  normal          |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  ui-focus        |
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Comment (by iammattthomas):

 I was excited to see this discussion, and wanted to add some thoughts with
 a historical perspective (I did the visual design of 2.7 if you don't
 know/remember me). My thoughts here align pretty closely with Dave's.
 Wasn't sold on first glance, but after a bit of consideration, I like the
 idea here. It's true that simplicity in design is trending hard (and thank
 goodness for it) but as Dave mentioned, the simpler icons are far clearer
 and easier to discern at a glance. And let's not forget that the heavily
 gradated, embellished look of the 2.7 admin was also pretty heavily
 influenced by what was in vogue at the time it was designed.

 Joen's suggestion of using an icon font is a good one; we've had lots of
 success with our Noticons font on !WordPress.com. Being able to change
 icon colors without creating new assets is pretty dreamy. We've also done
 a good bit with SVG graphics; browser support for SVG is solid enough to
 make that a good solution for plugin authors.

 While it's true that it will require work of the plugin authors who have
 chosen to create top-level menus for their plugins, it seems like a
 reasonable amount of work to ask of those authors. Ben, above, was correct
 in pointing out that it should actually be far easier for plugin authors
 to create 1-color icons that are a good match for the core set --
 replicating the exact lighting effects, shadows, and shading in the
 current core icons takes far more effort. Helveticons and the Noun Project
 pretty much prove that there's no limit to what you can do with 1-color
 icons. There's certainly plenty of time for new icons to be designed. Will
 out-of-date plugins look out-of-date? Yep. That's a symptom of something
 else, though.

 I do agree that the sizing of the icons isn't quite right (see:
 http://cl.ly/image/1B383D2e3Z3M ) -- I'd recommend basing them on
 16px/32px/etc multiples like we did with Noticons. I think the color isn't
 perfect either -- since they're flat, I think they need to be darker, so
 they contrast more with the background. Medium gray on light gray looks a
 little dull to me. But overall, I really like the idea.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/23333#comment:72>
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