Tbh the last one is my least favorite kind of icon design by a wide margin. It's busy and more anachronistic than a floppy disk as a save icon
I actually think I like the first one the best. I prefer simple icons with a splash of identifiable color
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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I'm the opposite. When all the icons are in the same style as the one on the left, they all look the fucking same to me
"okay was it the dark orange icon with a diagonal line, or the slightly darker orange one with a diagonal line going the other way?"
"okay which map application was for which company, these are both just arrows pointing right in a single color with no other identifying features"
Well now you're comparing it as part of a set of icons where homogeneity matters but that's not the fault of THIS icon.
I'm having a hard time grappling with these replies. Am I really the only one here who sees a pencil and not an abstract line?
I don't know man I think you're misunderstanding it
I see a pencil. a simplified icon of a pencil. It's going to look very similar to every other simplified icon of a pencil, so the moment another app has a similar icon, and they're grouped together in the "notes" folder as people often categorize their apps for easy finding, it's an entirely unnecessary extra mental step to figure out which one you want to open
I guess I'm just not the type of person who'd use two apps for notes?
ok, apply it to messaging or email apps, as it's very common to use more than one messaging service
if they were all made in the same simplified style, they wouldn't be differentiable at a glance
the more identifiable an icon is, the better. uniqueness is a great way to do that
No, I agree with you.
It looks like Harold’s purple crayon if it was red more than a pencil. I like it the least of the first four, but I think all of these look fine. 5 and 6 are a little busier than I’d prefer.
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:
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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.
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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.
far more easily and quickly recognizable
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.
You don’t need to know what it is for it to be recognizable in a row of icons.
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!
I’m confused, did they reverse the icons in this image? The photorealistic ink pot is the worst one easily, while the pencil ones are much more iconic (in all senses of the word).
The ink pot was way easier to tell apart from the other icons than the generic rounded squares.
This joke probably hits differently depending on your perspective and opinion on graphic design for UI.
But yeah the icons changed over time from the inkpot on the far right to the flat one on the left, so the joke is that over time they got worse not better.
I disagree. I don’t think that detail necessarily equals better. It’s all preference, and we tend to prefer what we’re already used to or were exposed to first.
The Mac OS design peak was almost 20 years ago. Flat UIs are basic and boring, too homogenous.
Ehh design is always subjective. I personally like consistent UI where the icons share a commonality. I'm not that big on rounded squares, but I understand the idea behind it
Icon packs are great for that reason because it basically allows anyone to choose the style they want (greyscale, pastel, circles, etc.) given that someone made an icon pack for it
Make icons great again. I want an OS with 1920s style icons.