The recent revelation of the unified application icon redesign across Adobe’s entire product line has stirred up the expected tidal wave of internet opinion. I haven’t seen any surveys yet, but my instinct tells me the vocal consensus is leaning towards thumbs-down.

The hullabaloo has inspired QuarkVsIndesign.com to sponsor a contest where some lucky pixel-jockey will win a whole mess of cool publishing-related prizes for their inspiring vision of application icons for the upcoming Creative Suite 3 applications.

To all the internet-armchair-icon-designers, I say put your mouse where your mouth is and show us how it should have been done!

Personally, I’m certainly not excited by the new designs. After the initial smile inspired by the nod to the periodic table had worn off, I was left feeling a little ‘meh’. I can see where these designs with their large patches of possibly distinct color could be more functional than the last few iterations of CS application icons. The past versions where not particularly distinct when sitting together in the OS X Dock. Even worse (as pointed out by fellow sheep Matt) is that the same designs were used to brand the toolboxes in the CS applications. Given the general similarity of the icon designs and the toolboxes themselves, it was fairly easy to get confused. As long as your particular mix of applications are not in close proximity on the new color wheel, I think a case can be made that the new icons have improved usability.

Still, the new icons don’t seem particularly creative. Kind of ironic from a company producing a Creative Suite for the Creative Pro market. I guess the real challenge in interface design these days is to be creative and interesting, while at the same time functional. Its a delicate and difficult balance that honestly a majority of developers seem to struggle with. Its been my own experience that the most creative artist-types I know often fail to see the failures in the functionality their designs. At the same time some of the people I know that have the best grasp of usability and functionality fail to see the need for creativity and artistic interest in their work. It will be interesting to see if the winner of the contest for the new icons manages to please both camps with their design.