Funny. Hadn’t seen these yet and didn’t have an opinion. I do have opinions re: what constitutes good design, however, so I was curious to hear their take. It turns out we disagree about everything.

Their fundamental criticism is that the older icons were better pictures. They were more “detailed,” more “photorealistic,” more “exciting,” less “bland,” had more “soul” and, my personal favorite, less different-than-what-I’m-used-to. But none of these describe good icons, the virtue of which is in the name itself. It should represent something uniquely without attempting to fully depict it or suggest anything qualitative about it beyond what is necessary to ensure it remains distinct and clear.

To my eye, the old icons generally appear far too busy and conceptually-loaded. The tournament-spec chessboard is a particularly extreme example since it will degrade to a mosaic pattern (though I bet the smaller size/DPI variations simplify the illustration to avoid it). The criticism of the new Finder icon as “meaningless” is especially choice, since that glyph is commonly “Go To” whereas the old icon is just a fun smiley face scribble that is, in fact, meaningless to anyone not yet familiar with the antiquated trademark.

Overall this just has a lot of old-man-yells-at-clouds energy, which isn’t useful. Change != bad. The new icons are fine. Chill out Paul.