If you know me, you know I enjoy using Apple’s products. Whether it be the iPhone, iMac, iPad, iRefrigerator… I find the simplicity and elegance to be a breath of fresh air after exclusively working on PCs for the first 18 years of my life. I do have one major issue with all of my iDevices however.
First, let’s take a look at a sample of Apple app icons.
Do you see it? Look closer. Closer. That’s right. Every single one of them has that hokey highlight stretching across the top/middle. All of these icons look dated and cheesy, and a big reason for that is this awful highlight. But wait. It gets worse.
It’s spreading like a virus! Let this be a lesson to you, app developers. Highlights are okay, just don’t use this one anymore.
Nice work, Pandora!
The highlight has been there from the beginning and unless the developer decides to tell iOS otherwise, it gets added automatically to app icons. If you want it to go away, you’re going to need to tell the app developers to pay closer attention.
So it’s true! I assumed it had to be something like this, since all of the apps had the exact same highlight. They should be paying closer attention. By not doing so, they are unwittingly following a trend without giving thought to what would actually make their app icon look great. The best example of this, I think, is GetGlue. The highlight absolutely ruins an otherwise decent looking icon.
Apple has really good guidelines for developers to achieve a consistent aesthetics on the platform. You can check out their Human Interface Guidelines here: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/IconsImages/IconsImages.html
As you can see in the App Icon section, it’s quite easy for the developer to remove the shine. I think traditionally the argument is it’s better to default the shine because it’s consistent, which adds that subtle credibility to your app for the average user. But your totally right, that a designer should know when to make the call not to use it if they have a rock solid icon that stands on it’s own.
Definitely, and especially now that adding the shine no longer makes it consistent. 25 out of the 110 apps I currently have on my phone have it. Anyway, I hope there’s a big Apple app icon overhaul now that Ives is in charge – I’ve disliked the Photo app icon since the beginning, and not just because of the shine.
Interesting thing about that sunflower. I just recently watched the 2003 Macworld keynote and Steve Jobs uses a picture that he took of a sunflower in a demonstration. That would have been around the time that iPhone development was taking shape. Wonder if that’s just a coincidence or not?
If that’s there biggest problem then they are in excellent shape. It simply demonstrates the powerful design influence that they have. I remember noticing this when i saw the first ads for Samsungs first copy cats phones.
In the early iOS years it was the mark of a quality app. But I agree the aesthetic is growing long in the tooth. We’ll see soon what direction Ive’s takes things.
You make an excellent point – and I was, of course, exaggerating quite a bit. I still think it’s wrong of many developers to use it without giving forethought to how it affects the look and feel of their app. Tweetbot can pull it off, because their icon is a big shiny robot bird, and it actually fits conceptually. In the case of GetGlue and Photosynth, however, it’s just distracting and ruins an otherwise great looking icon.
So maybe this post would be more appropriately titled if I had replaced Apple with app developers. I have noticed that even Apple has moved away from using it (Reminders, Passbook, Notes, etc), but they are still enabling it by adding it to all submitted icons by default.
I like reading your blog even though I never have any idea what you’re talking about.
One day I’ll write a blog post about crafting.
HA! Thanks.