this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Is it just me or do you guys miss these type of skeuomorphic icons? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by generaledelsud@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I don't know about all of you, I don't like these new flat icons that everyone is using. What ever happened to the old icons, like on iPhone and Samsung they used to have them years ago. Those were good times. Now it is always these stupid boring cartoonish designed icons. Side note: Somebody please update this icon pack. I am trying to use it on xfce on arch but some of the icons aren't working properly because it hasn't been updated in a while. I'll donate to you right away if you do it. Link to the repo: https://github.com/madmaxms/iconpack-obsidian

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[–] yum13241@lemm.ee 2 points 3 days ago

I use this icon pack. A very good GTK/Qt/Kvantum/whatever is Simplewaita. It goes together well with the icon pack.

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It's nice and easy on the eyes. I conjecture that glossy and matte (as seen here) styles of skeuomorphism gave way to more abstract design since:

  • Skeuomorphism is hard to get just right without being excessive and tacky
  • Saturated, simple blocks of color pop out more, particularly on the increasingly prevalent mobile UI
  • And thus also have better shelf appeal

If it were up to me, the red line would be when buttons and interactive elements are indistinguishable from text. The stock Android settings is probably among the worst offenders in this regard.

What I really miss is light mode that isn't hated for blinding users and dark mode that doesn't plunge the user into the void. Those "toolbars" look lovely, perfect for any lighting condition or time of day. I've yet to understand why, at present, designers insist on pure white everywhere when it comes to light mode. Maybe everyone is using the night light filter so it doesn't matter? At least pure black dark mode makes sense for power efficiency on OLEDs.

[–] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br 4 points 6 days ago

Skeuomorphism is hard to get just right without being excessive and tacky

that was always my impression of os x back in the day. it felt tacky as hell. i'm a linux guy, but windows's aero was so much more beautiful

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 2 points 5 days ago

Skeuomorphic, IMHO, is the best thing that happened to the world of software. I don't ever understand why the whole industry shifted to the ugly flat shit design.

[–] chloroken@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago

Colorful icons were amazing. That's literally why the iMac sold so well. Colorful. Prove me wrong.

[–] m4m4m4m4@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

I tried to do a couple of icon sets that went with that trend for KDE. At one point I was involved with the KDE VDG and was about to set the style of the icons they'd use.

But apparently some suit told them they needed to go completely flat as they needed to plaster Firefox/distros/whatever logos on it, so everything needed to look consistent.

So in the end I got bored about it and stepped away. I'm trying to redo a new square-shaped-skeumorphed icon set but it's so much work - like it'd need to be your daily job to pull it off.

However, if you take a look at it, it's already in this one - some of them are just the base shape with some logo plastered on it (like the whatsapp one, or the one with the butterfly) and voilá, there's your icon.

So icon sets are incredibly hard, and if you want a skeumorphism icon set its hard squared. That's another of the reasons flat icons thrive today.

[–] starbrite@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 days ago

Hey, that's the icon set I use in KDE! And yes i'd sell my kidneys to bring back skeumorphism and aero

[–] bunitor@lemmy.eco.br -1 points 6 days ago

skeumorphism is fucking ugly and it's the main thing that made me dislike the appearance of os x back in the day. it honestly blew my mind people found apple to be the vanguard of graphical design

[–] vort3@lemmy.ml 87 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Sometimes I think that I miss skeuomorphism, but then I realize it's not the skeuomorphism that I miss, but my childhood and days when the world was much simpler.

Would I like to bring back skeuomorphic UIs? Yes.

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm too old to be nostalgic for skeuomorphism. But a retina-burning amber monochrome monitor, text mode, with menus and UIs built out of ASCII graphics, or at best, 640 x 480 CPU-driven graphics modes? Now you're talking.

From my perspective, the skeuomorphic era of the early-late 2000s is still "modern".

[–] 4grams@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Ha, you and me both buddy, although I like retina burning green :). Let me know what you think of my personal profile site: www.gradyp.com, made it just for the graybeard aesthetic.

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

How do I type something? There's a cursor but keyboard input doesn't work for me. You oughtta make it do some dummy commands for fun, or better yet, some real ones in a sandbox, that'd be neat, for fun user interactivity. Otherwise, looks slick. Good job.

[–] 4grams@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Yeah, entirely fake. But yes, you read my mind, I plan on adding some fun interactivity someday. Plan on some fake terminal commands like ping and so forth.

Thanks for the feedback!

[–] generaledelsud@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ya I feel you, I remember I had an iPod when I was a kid with the icons I think it was iOS 6. Now when I try to find skeuomorphic icon packs on Linux it is almost impossibile and the ones you do find are abandoned ☹️

[–] Matriks404@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago

I miss the time when not all icons were a rectangle or a circle.

[–] EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It is by no means just you. I really hate how everything has to be so flat and shadow-less nowadays. I'm not at the point of shaking my fist at clouds yet or anything, but I really miss skeuomorphism in general!

[–] deafboy@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Way beyond fist shaking here. My brain simply doesn't process the trendy flat UX. It looks like when my kitchen garbage can tips over. A piece of carrot here, empty milk crate over there, sprinkled with onion peels, and some unidentified goop that I only discover later in the evening, using my bare feet, while getting a cup of water...

What's weird though is that I similarly hate the circle android icons. They all kinda blend together like a bowl of skittles. Make them squircle though... instantly recognizable!

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[–] NoLifeGaming@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I am a papirus man

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For those who haven’t seen snl’s papyrus skit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ

Or papyrus 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8PdffUfoF0

A couple of the best sketches SNL has ever done

[–] AusatKeyboardPremi@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I upvoted your comment just because it had links to the reference you made.

Also, the sketches were funny; thanks for sharing them.

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Thanks, glad you enjoyed them!

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Personally I don't, I kinda hate old skeuomorphism 😅

Neo skeuomorphism has some neat novelty though.

Edit: this is just my personal aesthetic preference, I don't begrudge anyone their love of skeuomorphism, or nostalgia for it.

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think I’m in the same place. I really like the idea of icons having depth. Modern icons are very versatile, but lack personality. Having some depth gives them some weight, but never really liked the emphasis on curves and gradients. I think a mix of original Material design and just a hint more depth would be the perfect sweet spot.

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'm curious how you feel about the GNOME application icons, they sound like they might be up your alley

Right now I generally have a preference for either weird stylized themed stuff I make myself, or very flat stuff like what android currently does for app icons, but I can certainly see the appeal of other stuff :)

I really like the application icons used in Gnome but I really like the consistent line weights and geometry of material symbolic icons so I'm still using a material icon pack on gnome

Edit: Here's a picture I grabbed of icons done in the adwaita style Gnome uses in case you don't use linux and aren't familiar with them. Its not a full sampling, but you get the idea :)

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Take these icons, add one more layer of simple gradient shading: perfection

For example, GIMP’s icon looks especially bad here to me. If it had just a hint of black shading, it would look massively better (imho).

[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Interesting, thanks for sharing your perspective with me! ☺️

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Any time! I’m a graphic nerd with none of the book learning, but I do work at a screen printing shop, so I have some intuitive understanding of logo/icon design, but don’t have the theory to go with it.

In other words, I have wildly subjective opinions that I’ll randomly dig my heels in on. (Sometimes when I have no idea what I’m talking about ha!)

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[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I miss UIs having lines and clear separations between elements. I loath this new flat style that everything has to have now, where you can't tell when one thing stops and another starts.

[–] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

And you can't tell when something is active/focused or not because every goddamn app and web site wants to use its own "design language". Wish I had a dollar for every time I saw two options, one light-gray and one dark-gray, with no way to know whether dark or light was supposed to mean "active".

I miss old-school Mac OS when consistency was king. But even Mac OS abandoned consistency about 25 years ago. I'd say the introduction of "brushed metal" was the beginning of the end, and IIRC that was late 90s. I am old and grumpy.

[–] carpelbridgesyndrome@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago

And you can’t tell when something is active/focused or not because every goddamn app and web site wants to use its own “design language”.

The FireTV os is worse. The active focus indicator is different between pages of the OS ignoring apps. Oh and it changes constantly.

[–] walthervonstolzing@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago

I've got these articles saved, about the history of brushed metal on Apple software: https://512pixels.net/2013/03/brushed-metal-intro/ https://512pixels.net/2016/11/the-brushed-metal-diaries-beyond-software/

To be honest I loved it ... though maybe it has to do with the fact that I have a soft spot for 10.4 Tiger, due to personal (?!) reasons. After Tiger they started progressively tearing down the brushed metal components.

[–] blazera@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (6 children)

This is the first time Ive ever seen those vowels together

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[–] richardisaguy@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

i don't, not at all, but still think elementaryOS looks beautiful! Like holy hell, even on their websites they manage to make their design look good!

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

I like how tidy it is. But I do prefer to be able to see icon shapes at a glance with my terrible eyesight as it helps identify.

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, I do miss that, but idk how much of it is nostalgia and how much is an absolute aesthetic preference. I think the main reason for the change though is Microsoft trying to make Windows work well on mobile devices though, meaning forgoing the aero and more expensive VFX.

Wish some DEs would make their default style more like a win7 era style. Would be nice to have the variety.

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 4 points 1 week ago

No reason they wouldn't work on a small phone, especially back then

photograph of the iPhone 2 with its skeuomorphic icons

[–] SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 week ago

i actually hate icons with like shading or 3d look. but I don't really use icons anyway, the only icons i see are in my system tray and when i run wofi

[–] Vivendi@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 week ago

I fucking love skeuomorphism !

[–] LeLachs@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Quick info, the link does not work. You need to put it in the address part aswell (like this [https://github.com/madmaxms/iconpack-obsidian](https://github.com/madmaxms/iconpack-obsidian) Here is a working one https://github.com/madmaxms/iconpack-obsidian

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The thing I'm more nostalgic for was the time when everything had to be a glistening amorphous translucent blob, a bit like the Cingular Wireless logo or the MusicMatch Jukebox logo. And I'm in that era where you can just play MSN messenger sounds and you'll get an OH MY GOD out of me.

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[–] 1984@lemmy.today 4 points 1 week ago

My plasma 6 desktop has absolutely stunning icons, and im like you - I like proper icons that look more interesting.

Try plasma 6, I'm sure those icon sets are also much more complete. :)

[–] Railison@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago

I miss the KDE 3.x crystal theme

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