Adobe changed all its app icons and designers are absolutely raging
Jun 25, 2020
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Last month, Adobe started to change the icons for its ever-growing suite of applications. The biggest change was the new colourful Creative Cloud logo, but the applications within the Creative Cloud Suite have been transitioning, too, and not everybody’s happy about it.
Many have noted that the icons are all starting to look the same, with multiple apps sharing the same colour scheme, making it confusing to find the right app. Others are definitely fighting their OCD over differences in font size and inconsistencies in spacing and alignment from one icon to the next, but the overall consensus doesn’t seem to be all that positive.
Thank you @Adobe for basically making all the icons the same colour – super easy to distinguish🙃 pic.twitter.com/NOcdAsA3PF
— Lt. Eddy (@LieutenantEddy) June 22, 2020
Some are (jokingly? or serious?) even refusing to update.
going to go out of my way to ensure i never update my adobe apps now because of this boneheaded icon redesign. who thought it was a good idea to remove the color differences between each program, now it's an indistinguishable mess pic.twitter.com/jh9WZ2Qqiz
— Billy Chitkin (@_gernge) June 16, 2020
Even more confusingly, this has stretched over to their mobile apps, too, with different apps using the exact same icon but in different colours.
Or the same icons w/ different color…
Adobe also change the phone app icons now… pic.twitter.com/doLRYchRvx— 青焼セイ (@enterws) June 19, 2020
Adobe doesn’t seem to be using exactly the same colour for every desktop icon, but they are grouping icons of a particular type by colour. So, Premiere Pro, After Effects and Audition have the same colour icon. As do Photoshop, Lightroom and Lightroom Classic.
https://twitter.com/nickrobalik/status/1276199059859165186
And while the colour is frustrating, particularly on a high-resolution screen with tiny icons that you could misclick at a glance, it’s not the only thing that’s upset users.
I wasn't going to comment on the updated Adobe icons … but what the bloody hell is this? WHY are After Effects and Premiere the same colour? WHY is the XD icon bigger than the rest? @Adobe are pioneers of the creative industry producing these remember. pic.twitter.com/Oq1IoID144
— Charlie O'Halloran (@OHLLRN) June 17, 2020
And some have noticed that the mobile app icons don’t even all line up properly, which is going to upset the designer in just about everybody.
…at Adobe and then have something like misaligned text on every icon? Like, no joke, none of your app icons are aligned if you look carefully, y’all should care abt this. Please, if you’re not going to bring the rainbow back, at least align text properly pic.twitter.com/GAnzPWJCx4
— Konstantin (@kmalaev17) June 16, 2020
Some have taken to override the new default icons to go back to their old ones…
Fixed my rainbow of Adobe software icons with manual override through substantial effort but I just realized that the font I happened to have selected makes it look like I wrote "MOTHERFUCHER" on there. Also, the alignment is a bit off now which irritates me only slightly less. pic.twitter.com/Cx67mdfauq
— Heather Coles™️ (@evilspirals) June 25, 2020
While others have designed their own – which arguably look much better than the new (or old, for that matter) official ones.
I didn't really like the new Adobe Creative Cloud Icons, so I decided to create my own! Let me know what you guys think 💙 pic.twitter.com/D2XyJPlppn
— k4 (@k4dude) June 20, 2020
Although the icon doesn’t change the functionality of the apps, it’s going to take a lot for some designers to get used to who’ve been using the previous icon colour scheme for perhaps a decade or more. Accidentally clicking and loading the wrong app is frustrating, especially for those resource hogs that take forever to load.
What do you think? Do you like the new icons, do you think they should revert to the old ones, or just start over and make a whole new design like K4dude’s?
[via Creative Bloq]
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.



































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24 responses to “Adobe changed all its app icons and designers are absolutely raging”
I believe this is a perfect representation of how little adobe give a shit about it’s own products.
I’m literally so upset about this. Glad I’m not the only one!
Right, because, if you take a glance at (2) icons, “Ae” isn’t distinguishable from “An” if they’re the same color. What was Adobe thinking? That their users will waste their precious time trying to recognize is it “Ae or “An”? Come on, Adobe!!!
Thankfully it only takes a couple clicks to change them back.
The day is coming when someone will say “Adobe” and the universal response will be “who?”
No one questions the suite on a corpse and Adobe is so close why does anyone bother. I find these questions and posts strange. There was a time where everyone in the industry or hobbyist had one or more Adobe products, now it seems that has reduced to maybe 1 in 10………….. Icons!!!!!! Seriously people?
They were almost 3D and now they are backpedaling to 2D.
Don’t care about fricking icons at this point. I just want my suite to remain working.
No problem.
The Bridge icon is black and white and gets lost
No great loss. I hardly use Bridge as Lightroom Classic is far better.
These people are my people
Am I the only one who likes it? The old ones just looked like a unicorn had thrown up after a meal of Alphabet pasta.
Yes, you are the only one. What a weird piece of shit you are
Replying to six-month old comments, you’re a fast one!
On my phone I noticed the icon had changed.
i dont care :D
I remember back in the day I used to customize the icons of programs because they were so ugly, I dont have all the adobe suite but I see why I would customize them.
Their icons don’t bother me… The lightroom tab layout in ACR do….
This is what happens when you hire all your developers from India and pay them minimum wage.
Adobe: if it ain’t broke, we’ll break it.
I don’t really care what the icons look like
I use muscle memory for the icons on my toolbar. I wished Windows would recognize typing Ai or Ps after tapping the Windows button.
Wow, Adobe really does like to make it harder to distinguish which one to hit when you’re on a deadline…
I really, desperately hope at some point that someone will come along and make something that smashes everything Adobe’s apps can do out of the water, because you’re all just getting screwed!
I don’t really understand. Adobe softwares for mac are FULL (I literally mean FULL) of absolutely HUGE bugs and they dedicate energy to change the icons design (messing it up)???