this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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The ink pot is far more easily and quickly recognizable than an orange stick on a black background. It was also transparent… making it all the more baffling why they didn’t bring icons like that back when introducing Liquid Glass.
An ink pot is more recognizable than a pencil...?
Yes, the more generic the icons become the harder they are to tell apart at a glance.
I have never seen an ink pot in my entire life lol
I only know what it is because of the context. It's the floppy disk save icon but for something even more archaic.
A pencil icon makes sense for a writing application, I don't think it's generic at all
You are missing the point. You need to be able to tell what it is in context with the icons next to it quickly. How archaic you think it is doesn’t matter.
The issue with this framing is that I’m not sure if I’ve seen Apple apps all together on my computer ever. They might be a set of similar looking app icons but they aren’t viewed together like Adobe apps. They’re alphabetized in the apps folder and are in separate sections on my dock.
I wasn’t referring specifically to the iWork apps. They are all in rounded squares now, like Tahoe won’t even allow apps to not be in a rounded square. Folder, stack, Launchpad, or Dock doesn’t matter, it was still easier to find what you were looking for when all icons were allowed to be their own shape and before this weird trend of abstraction in icons.
I will say that VLC, which isn’t in a rounded square is one of the most recognizable icon in my launchpad. But also, it’s a literal traffic cone. And I never hunt for it because I remember its name.
My launchpad in general is like 60% rounded squares and 40% whatever the developer wanted to do. Patchwork, gemini2, AmorphusDiskMark, HandBrake, Ryujinx, blackmagic disk speed test, supernote partner, vintage story etc. It’s more frustrating to me how inconsistent the iconography is since I never use the icons to figure out what I want to open and wildly different looking icons don’t look well in the dock. Spotlight search (or specifically Raycast) is what I use to open apps 95% of the time, so I might be a bit outside the norm. If I had to scroll through the 8 pages of my launchpad apps every time I wanted to open an app, I’d just throw my computer out the window.
I figured that at this point, app icon design is like website favicon design. Superfluous and unreliable for remembering what it belongs to considering designs change so often.
But how is an ink pot more recognizable than a pencil? What is ambiguous about the first icon? It's not like it's an abstract representation of one
You are trolling right? The orange gradient pencil shape is extremely abstract, even compared to the older icons right next to it. But the point here is that distinct shapes are easier to tell apart than rounded squares with similar simple lines.
An orange cylinder with a tapered yellow/tan end? Yeah that looks like a cartoon pencil. I can tell that every other icon uses an ink pen, too.
You are considering it within a set of icons and I'm only judging it on its own. If every other iPhone app looks the same then yeah I get it
I think the ink pot is the best picture of the bunch but I only look at icons when they're tiny and don't prefer when they're super detailed like that
One is a line and one is a unique shape. I've also never seen an ink pot, but that silhouette is one that is distinct. Looking at the two icons leads down two different recognition paths:
this is a line, what things do I know that are lines? There's a lot. What could this line be telling me that it does? There's a lot.
wtf is that shape? There are very few things it could be. What does this shape mean? Dunno, but I'm certain I won't confuse it with something else.
So you see the first image and DON'T immediately recognize it as a pencil? You see it aa an abstract line?
If I look directly at it and only it, I see a pencil and its shadow. If my eyes are quickly scanning a line of similar icons, I see a diagonal line and a horizontal line.
Oh really? Because I had no idea what that gray blot was, despite having used actual ink pots back in the day.
You don’t need to know what it is for it to be recognizable in a row of icons. Also it’s pretty low res here compared to what it looked like contemporarily.
Exact same logic applies to the orange pencil on a black background.
Not when they are all the same shape.
I agree that some transparency would’ve been cool in icons for Liquid Glass, but I like all icons being the same size. I can reorganize my taskbar or homescreen, and it all looks uniform and aligned. To each their own though!